


I Get To Love You.

by milominderbinder



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: College AU, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Living Together, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Sharing a Bed, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-05 22:09:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15180428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milominderbinder/pseuds/milominderbinder
Summary: It's his senior year of college, and Alec Lightwood needs money.  Pretending to have a live-in boyfriend so they can take part in a psych study at their college seems like a great idea, and Magnus Bane is the perfect candidate  -- a casual acquaintance who also happens to be the most gorgeous and charismatic man alive.  There’s just one problem.As the study goes on and they grow closer, Alec might be starting to fall for him forreal.But it can't happen.  Because Magnus isn’t his soulmate.





	1. Chapter One

Alec’s two steps out the door of his  _ Foreign Literature  _ class when his phone rings.  He dodges out of the doorway and fishes it right out of the back pocket of his jeans, because he knows that ringtone -- Alec isn’t a technology guy, but of  _ course  _ his little sister knows how to work his phone better than him, so Izzy’s put some irritating pop song about girls being amazing as her personal tone and he doesn’t know how to change it.  A couple people coming out of the quiet lecture hall give him dirty looks, but Alec just stares them down as he presses himself back against the door and brings the phone up to his ear.  He’s been waiting for this call all day.

“Izzy,  _ hey,”  _ Alec says, as soon as he hears the tinny sound of her breathing on the other end of the line.  “How did it go?”

“Define  _ go,”  _ Izzy says, with a grim little laugh, and Alec’s stomach sinks.  “Sorry, big brother, but it was shot dead before I even got there.  Apparently dad’s income still counts for us, even though he’s in another freaking  _ country.   _ Financial aid were ready to laugh me out of the building.”

The way she says it is all sharp dismissal, and Alec can almost picture the playful way she’ll be rolling her eyes on the other end of the phone, but he can’t bring himself to take it as lightly as she’s trying to.  It’s alright for Izzy, Alec thinks -- life tends to work out for her no matter what, partly because she tries very hard but also because she’s just the sort of person who life wants to work out for.  When you’re Alec, on the other hand, everything’s a lot more  tricky _. _

“Okay.  We knew that would probably happen -- it was a long shot.”  Alec slumps back a little more against the door of his lecture room, and tries to remember being in class a few minutes before, when life seemed so much simpler.  To think he was stressing over which Chimamanda Adichie had the most cohesive themes to analyse in his next paper, when he should have been wondering how he was gonna pay his bills. 

“It was.  But don’t worry, big brother, you hear me?”  Even through the bad connection on their phones, Izzy’s voice is more calming to Alec than anyone else’s in the world; still, right then it’s hard not to be a  _ little  _ stressed.  “We’ll get our money from grandmother in the summer.  All we need to do is find enough money to not get kicked out for the next two months.  How hard can that be?”

Right, thinks Alec.  How hard can it be for two students with full schedules to make two months worth of New York living costs on short notice?  Alec is already working most of his free hours at the campus bookstore, and it’s not close to enough money to cover their rent.

“Yeah.  Yeah, Iz, it’s okay,” he says, although not much of him believes it.  “I’ll sort this out. Don’t worry.”

She says a few more encouraging platitudes and hangs up the phone, and Alec just stands there for a moment, sighing.  He’d known this was probably going to happen, but he’d been  _ hoping.   _ How, after leaving their mom and them behind years ago, is Robert Lightwood somehow still causing problems?  

Alec lets himself wallow in annoyance and worry for exactly thirty seconds.  Then he stands up tall, lets out a long breath, and makes himself think.

He’ll check the student notice board first, he decides.  People are always advertising for help on there -- maybe some rich kid will want a tutor, or someone to help bury a body or something.  Alec doesn’t have all that many moral standards when it comes to paying rent for him and Iz right now. If he needs to, he’ll try and find some way of working nights at another job and just give up sleep, but first, the notice board -- after all, between the two of them, they won’t need  _ that  _ much money to tide them over.  Alec makes sure he has all his possessions loaded into his heavy backpack, slings it over his shoulder, and sets off to the common room on the other side of campus.

And so the notice board is where he first sees the flyer.  It’s where everything, actually, changes.

 

* * *

 

The flyer is simple.  It has the psychology department’s logo stamped in the corner, and it’s a little tatty, a few more brightly-coloured ads for open mic nights and sports team tryouts tacked around the edges, overlapping it.  It’s only because Alec’s looking so hard that he even notices it there. The flyer reads:

**_PAID RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY: Romantic NON-SOULMATE Couples Study!_ **

_ You and your partner are eligible to take part if all of the following apply: _

  * _You are in a committed, monogamous relationship_
  * _You have been so for 4 months or more_
  * _You currently live together_
  * _You are not soulmates_



_ The study involves: _

  * _Candid surveys on romantic habits and history_
  * _Weekly interviews, both individually and as a couple_
  * _Weekly observations in your own home_



At the bottom, there are the contact details of the people running the study, and it wouldn’t be anything to catch Alec’s eye if it weren’t for what’s next to that.  

_ Participants who complete the 2-month study will each be compensated $500. _

Five hundred dollars.  

That’s a lot.  That’s as much as he probably needs, total, to make sure him and Izzy can keep their apartment til summer.  A few hundred dollars would literally solve all Alec’s problems right now, and if he can earn it via a university study which will work around his class times and not involve any actual effort of going out and finding a job, that’s all the better.  There’s just one problem.

Alec Lightwood, twenty-one years old, attractive and intelligent and with a heart of unwavering gold -- has never had a boyfriend.

_ Shit _ , he thinks, as he reaches to take a contact slip from the flyer anyway.   _ Shit, it would be so perfect.  Can’t they be doing another study into people who are permanently single?   _ Maybe, he thinks, he can find some way to figure it out.  Maybe the study will decide they want more variety of people in various relationship statuses.  Maybe Izzy, who is much better at love than him, would want to do it, although he doesn’t wanna put any more pressure on her considering how many classes she’s taking.  Maybe he can --

“Oh, hey.”  All of a sudden, a smooth, charming voice has appeared behind Alec.  Alec jolts and immediately spins around, only to find himself staring into the face of the most gorgeous man on their entire campus -- Magnus Bane, who Alec had the utter embarrassing pleasure of being in a study group with for  _ one _ project in a philosophy seminar the year before.  

They haven’t spoken since then, but every time he sees him on campus, Alec seems to find himself staring after Magnus like a hypnotised puppy.  Magnus is just so  _ sparkly,  _ and he has such nice skin and he does his hair so well and his biceps make it look like he could probably lift a truck.  Alec’s breath all goes out of his chest a little, and he tries to think of a greeting to say back, before realising all of a sudden that Magnus isn’t even talking to him.  He’s looking at the flyer, too.

“Look at that.  Shame it’s just for couples.  They don’t usually pay that much for studies, here -- and I could certainly use the cash.”

He shoots a wry little smile at Alec, and all at once, Alec’s head explodes.  He lifts a hand up to fiddle awkwardly with the strap of his backpack, and clears his throat, because it feels like it’s full of sand.  He’s made the mistake of looking into Magnus’s big brown eyes, and now he’s not even able to get out the words he wants to say.

“Hey, you’re Alexander, right?” Magnus checks, when Alec seems unlikely to say anything else.  Alec just nods for a moment, torn between being happy Magnus remembered or sad that he didn’t remember quite  _ enough  _ \-- because Alec’s pretty sure he remembers every detail he ever heard about Magnus, even though it’s been half a year.  And Magnus is still using his full name, because it was written out on their group assignments for that class and Alec was too awkward to ever correct him.

“Uh, yeah.  Hi, Magnus.”  Alec realises belatedly that he would have seemed much cooler if he phrased Magnus’s name as a question too, but.  Too late now.

And then, for a moment, his eyes catch along the bottom of Magnus’s neck, where his soulmark is displayed proudly.  

Alec always feels a little flushed when he notices that.  Having your soulmark  _ out  _ like that is such a bold move, something you rarely see.  Most people go to great lengths to cover theirs up -- only Alec’s parents and sister have ever seen his at all.  But Magnus’s soulmark is big and sharp across the blade of his collarbone, and Magnus wears plenty of low-dipping or open shirts, sometimes even arranges his necklaces so that it’s more clearly visible.  It’s a little more common to be open about your mark if you’ve got one like Magnus’s, though. A vague one. Because Magnus’s soulmark simply reads:  _ hey. _

Which, actually, is pretty close to the first thing Alec ever said to Magnus.  He’s sure it was just  _ hi  _ or something like that -- Alec’s a guy of few words, especially when faced with hot guys.  Knowing that his first word to Magnus could have matched Magnus’s soulmark would almost get Alec’s hopes up, if he didn’t know better.

The thing is, Alec remembers the first words Magnus ever said to him.  You don’t go around forgetting the first words spoken to you by  _ Magnus Bane _ .

Alec’s soulmark is tucked into a secretive corner of his hipbone, written small, and it reads:  _ well hello there, handsome.   _ But the first day they spoke, Magnus had taken a seat next to him at the library and tugged out one of Alec’s earbuds and smiled and only said, “is this study group?”

So Magnus isn’t Alec’s soulmate.  That’s that. Sorted. Simple.

Now, all Alec needs to do is figure out how to stop his heart from racing whenever he sees Magnus’s face.

In that moment, Magnus just gives him a smile, glances at the noticeboard wryly one last time, and lifts his hand up in a little wave.  Alec is momentarily hypnotised by his glittering nails and rings. “Well, see you around, Alexander.”

It’s not until Alec has watched Magnus leave and then stared at the door he left through for several more long moments that he remembers to look back at the slip of paper in his hand, and thinks,  _ oh.   _ He might have just missed an opportunity.

 

* * *

 

Between studying at the library and doing after-hours inventory at the bookstore, Alec gets home late.  Izzy’s bedroom door is ajar, so he pokes his head inside, but she’s passed out face-down in a tangle of duvets, snoring loudly.  He rolls his eyes at her fondly, and closes the door on his way out.

He knows it isn’t most people’s idea of a great time, sharing their college apartment with their little sister, but Alec can’t imagine anyone else he’d rather live with.  His freshman year in students halls had been an absolute nightmare, and when Izzy had announced she was coming to the same college as him, getting a place together had seemed like a great idea.  And it  _ is.   _ Her cooking disasters and prying into his love life aside, she’s remarkably easy to live with.

The only problem  _ now  _ seems to be the fact that financial aid had messed up a bunch of Izzy’s entitlement papers, and are suddenly withdrawing her last semester of funding for the year.  Because apparently, their dad makes too much money -- even if they haven’t spoken to him in  _ years,  _ since he left their mom, and he’s not even in the country anymore.

By the time he gets into his own room, Alec can do nothing but collapse backwards onto his bed and let out a long, loud sigh.  

His fingers keep itching towards his phone in his pocket, but he’s resisting.  He doesn’t have Magnus Bane’s phone number, but they added each other on facebook back when they were in that group project together, so he theoretically has a way to get in touch.  And he's maybe, possibly instagram stalked until he found Magnus’s account there, too, but has been too afraid to follow it in case he looks embarrassingly keen.

That’s all moot, though.  Alec forces himself to toss his phone onto the bedside table so he won’t have to look at it as he pulls his pyjamas on.  What’s he even thinking?  That they could  _ pretend  _ to be a couple?  Maybe that would work if it was just some interviews, but they would have to pretend to  _ live  _ together, at least during the parts where they were going to be interviewed.  And how would they explain things to their friends? They wouldn’t be able to admit to everyone they were lying, in case it got back to the people running the study.

Alec is absolutely putting way too much thought into this.  It’s a terrible idea, so it's good to kill it before it even begins. He sighs, scrunches his eyes closed for one second to force the thoughts out of his brain, and climbs into bed.

He’s tired, and it’s been a long day.  Tomorrow, he’ll figure out some  _ other,  _ far more sensible way of making a few hundred dollars.  And everything will probably be fine.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Alec goes to his morning classes and then has the afternoon shift at the bookstore.  It’s mid-semester, so things are usually pretty slow -- at the start of the year everyone’s always frantically crowding the place to get their books, and before finals week there tends to be another flood of students suddenly realising they actually need to study for those classes they were originally intending to blow off, but mid-year is quiet.  Alec likes it best when it’s quiet. He can just sit behind the counter, going over his Latin notes, not having to speak to anyone, and still get paid for his time.

Which is exactly what he’s doing at 2:16 PM, when Magnus Bane walks through the door.

Alec only glances up reflexively when he hears the door open, but as soon as he sees who it is, he freezes.  He’s hardly bumped into Magnus for the whole year since their class together ended, and now they’ve seen each other twice in two days?  Magnus looks as uniquely interesting as he always does, with red eyeshadow matching the plumes of roses embroidering his jacket, his soulmark still standing out sharp and bare on his collarbone. Alec feels a little bit hot under the neck of his plain t-shirt.

“Uh, can I help you with anything?” Alec calls over, quickly shoving his Latin sheets under the counter.  Magnus looks over at him with a smile, and Alec absolutely  _ melts. _

“Oh, most  _ certainly _ .”  Is it Alec’s imagination, or is Magnus’s voice sort of flirty?  “Although sadly I already know which book I’m here for.”

He definitely seems to, navigating quickly to the medical section and using one long finger to pull something off the shelf.  It’s less than a minute before he’s heading up to the counter, leaning all-too-close to Alec as he drops the heavy textbook down. Alec takes reflexive note of the title -- the dry-sounding  _ Principles of Research Methodology _ \-- before ringing it up, and stuttering only a little as he reads out the total.

Magnus pulls out his card with a much tenser smile.

“Do you get a lot of people in here complaining about how expensive textbooks are?” he asks, as he keys in his pin.  “I’ve been trying to get by without this one, but I finally had to give in and ask a friend to loan me the money for it.  I could pay my  _ rent  _ on how much I’ve spent on books this year.”

“Hah,” says Alec, his throat feeling a little dry as he watches Magnus hefting the heavy book into his glittering silver bag.  “Yeah, well, you’re preaching to the choir here. I only got this job in the first place so I could have a discount.”

Magnus lets out a little laugh at that, as he finishes closing up his bag.  “Well, if only I’d thought of  _ that  _ earlier.  Thanks, Alexander.”

He gives a little wave, and heads towards the door.  It takes him maybe thirty seconds to weave around all the book displays, and in that time, Alec’s brain manages to short-circuit.  All he can think about is how cute Magnus looks, and the fact that they apparently  _ both  _ need money, and the way he keeps smiling at Alec, and --

Magnus puts one hand on the doorhandle as if the world’s in slow motion, and Alec hops up from his seat, leaning across the counter in one swift move.  

“Uh, Magnus, wait!”  Magnus stops and turns around, and Alec’s cheeks turn instantly pink.  This might legitimately be insane.  And Alec’s  _ not  _ an impulsive sort of person.  But right now he feels like he can’t help himself.  “There’s, uh, something I actually wanted to ask you.  Do you have time to get coffee and talk for a minute?”

Magnus raises one artful eyebrow.  “With you, Alexander?  I always have time.”

 

* * *

 

“So -- and pardon me if I’m not understanding this right, it’s been a very long day -- you want us to  _ pretend  _ to be a couple?”

“A couple who are living together,” Alec nods, taking a slurp of his cappuccino and immediately wiping away the foamy moustache it leaves on his upper lip.  He feels a little jittery and keyed up, strangely confused and impulsive in a way he never is, and he’s ordered a drink he doesn’t usually order, too, because he didn’t want Magnus to judge his plain black coffee after Magnus ordered a decadent hot chocolate covered in marshmallows -- it’s been a strange day.  “I’m sorry. I know that’s -- a  _ lot.   _ And like I said, you one hundred percent don’t have to do this.  Just, since you said you’d like some extra cash too, and we already know we aren’t soulmates, I thought it could maybe work out for both of us, but feel completely free to tell me no if you don’t --”

“Alexander.”  Magnus reaches out to touch his fingertips oh-so-lightly to Alec’s arm, and it’s like he’s hit a snooze button.  Alec immediately falls silent. “I actually think it’s a rather good idea. I’m not morally opposed to tricking the system in any way, and a few hundred dollars could do wonders for my school year.”  

“Oh.”  Alec can feel the points of heat at the tops of his cheeks, and just knows he’s turning bright red.  “So, you want to do it, then?”

Magnus looks at him for what feels like a very, very long moment, stirring his hot chocolate idly while his soft eyes rest on Alec.  Then, just when it feels like Alec’s heart might thunder right out of his chest, Magnus smiles.

“Sure, why not?  Maybe we’ll even have fun.”


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter two! from here the chapters keep getting longer, whoops ♥

The first port of call is telling Izzy.  As Alec’s  _ current  _ roommate, he feels she deserves to know that he’s going to be fake-moving-out for the next couple of months.  Of course, he’ll still be sleeping there every night, and leaving most of his stuff there, but Alec and Magnus had agreed it would be better to pretend they live in Magnus’s one-bed studio apartment, for the study.  Alec will just bring some clothes and books over, and hang out there for the weekly interviews.

When he tells Izzy the plan, she looks at him like he might have gone mad.

“Big bro, I’ve been bugging you for  _ three years  _ to try dating someone, and now the first shot you’re gonna give it is  _ fake?”   _ Her eyes squint at him like she’s trying to decode all of his secrets -- something Izzy is uncannily good at doing.

“Iz, why does  _ that  _ matter?” he tries, stirring the pasta sauce he’s making, mostly as an excuse to keep his back to her.  “This has nothing to do with actual romance. It’s just an easy way to make some money.” He pauses, and then adds, “It’s not like he’s my soulmate, anyway.”

“Someone doesn’t have to be your soulmate for you to date them, Alec.  For all you know, you won’t meet your soulmate until you’re sixty years old -- do you really wanna be waiting around completely alone until you figure it out?”

They've had this conversation too many times, over the course of their teenage years while Izzy dated half the school and Alec sat home alone reading Shakespeare and convincing himself that making out probably wasn't all that fun anyway, for him to linger on it now.

“You’re off topic.  This is a business transaction.  Magnus is a friend, and this is an easy way for us to both earn some money.”

“A friend you’re wildly attracted to.” Izzy perches herself on the kitchen counter and tries to stick a finger into the pasta sauce.  Alec bats her away before she burns her hand.

“Why would you say  _ that?”   _ he asks, although his heart is suddenly beating rather quick.  Izzy’s never even met Magnus, and it’s not like Alec  _ talks  _ about him usually.  A few anecdotes back when they were in their study group together last year, maybe, but he’s hardly been sitting around pining since then.  Magnus is just a guy who isn’t Alec’s soulmate, but happens to be cute and interesting. There are probably plenty of guys like that in the world.

“Alec, please.”  Izzy changes her food-related attack by stealing some sliced peppers from the counter, and changes her Alec’s-personal-life-related attack by grinning at him.  “It’s not like I didn’t notice you Facebook stalking him a million times after you guys met. Even over the summer, when you hadn’t seen him for  _ months.” _

Alec’s face is quickly flushing with heat.  He decides to tell himself it’s because he’s standing over the oven.

“Look -- Iz -- this isn’t about that.  This is just about earning some money, okay?  Can you remove the romantic part of this equation from your brain?”  Izzy narrows her eyes at him as if to say  _ of course I can’t,  _ which he probably should have expected.  “How about this -- stop asking about my love life, or you won’t get any of this pasta I’m making right now.”

Alec learned pretty early on in his career as a big brother that the best way to control  _ any  _ of his siblings is through food.  He’s not even a very good cook, but it works on Izzy just as well now that she’s twenty as it did when she was two.  

“Oh, fine."  She pouts, and eats another pepper.  “I’ll drop it. For  _ now.   _ But I’m really not gonna stop bringing this up until you’re out there and dating and  _ happy,  _ Alec.”

“I’ll date when I meet my soulmate,” Alec says, and dumps some spaghetti into the pot.  “There’s no point wasting it until then.”

Izzy glares at him, but she doesn’t bother arguing back.  They’ve had this argument too many times before -- and she really wants that pasta.

 

* * *

 

That night, when the sun has set over New York City and only the occasional drunken shout or muffled siren outside their apartment block is there to remind him the rest of the world exists at all, Alec lays awake and thinks about his soulmate.

As a kid, he really hated the idea of soulmates.  When everyone else in elementary school was fawning over the romantic storybooks which explained the system of their soulmarks -- the books always about two attractive white heterosexuals who met no later than their teens and then sailed off into the sunset -- Alec would be scowling in the corner.  When the other kids played pretend soulmate games on the playground, he'd hide in the library to get out of it.  Looking back now, he knows what that was: deep down, even when he was a kid, Alec already knew that his soulmate was going to be a man.  And he was terrified.

The mysterious, all-knowing soulmate system might not care if you’re gay, but the rest of the world sure does.

It was as he got older, as he started to accept a lot more truths about himself, that Alec began clinging to the thought of his soulmate.  When he was a closeted teenager, terrified of coming out to his family or letting the world in on who he really was, he’d sort of think towards his soulmate like a beacon: when he met his soulmate, he’d never have to be lonely again.  He’d never have to wonder if there was something broken about him just because he didn’t stare after the girls in the high school hallways like every other guy.  He’d never met his soulmate, had no idea who the man would be, but sometimes the mere  _ thought  _ of him was all that got Alec through the days.

It’s a weird thing.  He’s never heard anyone else talk about it happening.  But Alec just gets this feeling, all the way deep down, that he’s already in love with his soulmate.  Before they’ve even met.

In the darkness of his bedroom, Alec shifts onto one side, groggily pulling the sheets up over his head in his shitty single bed.  He’s happier now than he used to be, sure. Has a lot less sleepless nights like this. He’s out to his siblings (if not his parents) and doesn’t feel the need to lie about his sexuality if any of his college classmates ask him point-blank either.  Living away from home has done wonders for his confidence and happiness and everything else.  But in the back of his mind, Alec still gets this feeling like his soulmate is the only person he’ll ever  _ really  _ be able to rely on.  Like he's not going to have a stable foundation until that day.

He’s just a traditional guy.  In this day and age, it might be more normal to date before you meet your soulmate, to even fall in love or live together or have  _kids_ _ ,  _ but that’s not how it’s been for most of history.  

It doesn’t matter if Izzy thinks he’s lonely.  Alec’s not lonely, because he has the idea of his future dream man to keep him company, the same way it always has.  Waiting for  _ the one  _ will be worth it once it actually happens.

And, he has to most importantly remind himself: Magnus Bane doesn’t fit anywhere into that picture.  No matter how cute he is.

 

* * *

 

Magnus had emailed their names in to the professor in charge of the study, and the next day he cheerfully texts Alec to confirm they’ve been accepted as participants.  Apparently the researchers had been eager to have a same-sex couple on the rota, and Alec is, for once, glad about being singled out for his sexual orientation.  There aren’t many couples participating in the study -- that, plus the long time period, must be why there’s so much money on offer -- so he's happy to be some of the few.

Alec’s making lunch when he gets the text, but he pauses in the very vital step of ‘boiling water for noodles’ to lean against the counter and text Magnus back right away.

[ 12:43 • To: Magnus ]

_ great, thnx. should we meet up to go over details/get our story straight? _

He’s totally not just looking for an excuse to see Magnus -- it’s just very important they get these things right, if they’re going to get away with pretending to be a couple, and text is so impersonal.  Alec goes back to making his noodles.

[ 12:47 • From: Magnus ]

_ Most definitely!  In fact, we should go on a few ‘dates’ this week, before the study starts, to make sure we’re convincing ;)  Are you free for coffee this afternoon? I know a delightful place near campus! _

[ 12:50 • To: Magnus ]

_ sure, mssg me time + address _

[ 12:52 • From: Magnus ]

_ You’re not a very charismatic texter, did you know that?  Lucky you’re so charming in person :* See you at 3! xx _

Alec doesn’t quite know how to respond to that, so he puts down his phone and returns to his lunch-making.  It’s not like he needs to be flirty in their texts or anything. It’s just a  _ fake  _ date.

 

* * *

 

Alec turns up at the coffee shop slightly before three, because he’s prone to being punctual and also feels slightly nervous for reasons he refuses to address.  The shop is pretty quiet -- the only other people around are a couple of hassled-looking students with their laptops out and headphones in, and one woman with a crying baby who looks like she cares about nothing except sleeping for a week.  Alec picks a table far away from all of them, anyway, tucked right into the back corner of the room, and then goes to order a drink.

He gets a black coffee for himself, this time, because it really  _ is  _ his go-to order and his fake boyfriend should probably know that about him.  

Then, at the last second, Alec orders a hot chocolate with marshmallows as well.  As soon as he does it, he’s embarrassed, but also far too embarrassed to tell the barista to stop making it a few seconds later, so he’s stuck.  Yes, it’s what Magnus had ordered yesterday -- and what, if Alec remembers correctly, he’d brought in a thermos to the library several times when they were in their study group last year -- but it doesn’t mean that’s what Magnus is going to want to drink  _ every  _ day.  Alec’s never ordered for someone else before.  He feels miserably presumptuous as he carries the drinks back to their little table, wishing he hadn’t bothered at all.

A few minutes later, Magnus turns up.  He emerges through the coffee shop door like it’s some sort of dramatic prop which was put there just for him to navigate around and look beautiful -- Alec’s palms actually start to sweat, and he quickly wraps both hands around his coffee mug, giving his most awkward smile when Magnus waves exuberantly and begins to head over.

As usual, Magnus is dressed like an art exhibit, glitter in his hair and rings on his fingers and a velvet jacket opened wide enough at the collar to leave his soulmark on full display.  Alec's wearing the same t-shirt as yesterday.  He wishes he'd dressed up.

“Alexander!  Nice to see you, darling,” Magnus says loudly, smiling so wide his eyes crinkle up at the corners.  Alec’s throat goes a little bit dry, but he ignores it.

“Hey, Magnus.  I, uh, got you a drink -- hot chocolate, I just remembered that’s what you were drinking yesterday, but if it’s not what you wanted I can go and get you something else right now, or --”

“Hot chocolate is  _ amazing,”  _ says Magnus, as he settles into the seat across from Alec.  Actually, something in his eyes seems to have dropped, suddenly -- not in a bad way, but in a way that seems even more  _ real  _ than usual.  Magnus is glorious to watch, but there’s a little bit of spectacle to him that Alec knows can’t always be genuine.  It’s gone, right then, and even if it’s just in a tiny way, he looks a little vulnerable. “You really didn’t have to get me anything.  I can’t believe you remembered my order.”

“Well.”  Alec clears his throat, and tries not to let on how he pleased he is that he got something right.  “That’s what boyfriends are for, right?”

Magnus lets out a peal of laughter, and it feels remarkably easy to settle into things, after that.  The first order of business is just having a _conversation_.  It’s not like they’re strangers, of course -- you pick up  _ some  _ details on a person’s life and habits when you’re in a study group with them for a semester, especially if that person is as chatty as Magnus -- but it’s hardly like the two of them had been friends, and it’s been over half a year since they saw each other regularly.  They have a lot to learn about each other. The little things, like favourite colours and allergies and their favourite movies from the Marvel franchise.  Magnus likes Ragnarok and Alec likes Black Panther and they both agree those are good choices.  Magnus sneezes around cats and Alec can’t eat shellfish.  Nothing groundbreaking is revealed.

It’s a nice conversation, though.

“So, obviously we’ll have to tell our friends as if it’s real,” Magnus says, suddenly, when he’s halfway through his second hot chocolate.  “I doubt any of mine would blink twice over me announcing I had a boyfriend, but having a boyfriend I’m  _ moving in with  _ the day I tell them he exists might cause some of them to --  _ well _ .  They have a great fondness for trying to stage interventions on me when they think I’m making bombastic life choices, let’s put it that way.  What about your friends?”

Alec’s friends are mostly just his siblings, cousin, and the one other gay guy in his mixed martial arts class, so he just shrugs.

“Yeah, I’m, uh.  Not gonna lie. It’ll seem pretty out of character for me.  I’ve got kind of -- well, I don’t really  _ date.   _ Since I haven’t met my soulmate yet, you know?”

“Sure,” says Magnus, fishing a marshmallow out of the bottom of his mug with a spoon.  He’s not meeting Alec’s eyes but his voice sounds sympathetic. “You’re a traditional sort of guy.”

“Yeah.”  Alec swallows, a little encouraged by Magnus’s understanding.  “But, uh, well, the other thing is. I’m not, like,  _ out.   _ To my parents?  Or really the rest of my family, other than my siblings.  So if we needed a reason to say we’d maybe --  _ hid  _ being together until now, we could use that.”

“Okay, sure,” Magnus agrees.  He’s looking at Alec through his eyelashes, now, like he’s maybe a little bit hesitant or maybe mostly just sympathetic.  “Parents can be tough, I get that. You’re not going to catch any problems from them if it gets out that you’re moving in with a guy, though?  Even if it’s just fake.”

“No, no,” Alec assures him, twisting his fingers around the handle of his mug just for something to do.  “There’s no way they’ll find out. The rest of my family all live pretty far away, and my brother and sister would never tell, so.”

He carefully avoids asking about Magnus’s own parents, because there was definitely something in Magnus’s eyes when he said  _ I get that,  _ but Alec hates prying and Magnus certainly doesn’t look like he wants to bring the topic back up himself.

“Well, perfect!  That’ll certainly make it less suspicious to have a serious boyfriend out of nowhere -- we can simply say we hid it for a while.  And then I suppose after the study is over we’ll wait a few weeks and then say we moved too quickly and decided to break up. I doubt anyone who knows me will be surprised if they think I’ve made yet another romantic blunder.”

Alec once again bites his tongue to resist asking for any more information on  _ that.   _ Magnus’s romantic life is none of his business.  

He also tries not to think about the fact that, while he’s thought a lot about their fake relationship in the last day, he hadn’t even considered their fake  _ break-up.   _ It puts an odd feeling in his stomach when Magnus mentions it.  That’s probably normal, Alec decides -- it’s just nerves about getting away with this ruse in general, nothing specific about breaking up.  Because this is a business transaction, and the fact that Magnus is gorgeous and funny and remarkably easy to talk to doesn’t mean  _ anything _ .  He’s not Alec’s soulmate, so Alec doesn’t like him like that.

“Alright, so.  I guess that’s sorted, then?” Alec asks, mostly to distract himself.  Magnus gives a wide smile which seems to show off all of his very perfect teeth.

“I’ll tell my friends about you tonight, and then you can move some stuff into my place this weekend!  Oh, and we should probably go on a few more dates between now and then, to really get comfortable around each other and such.  I’ll plan some fun things and text you! I’m _great_ at planning dates.”

Magnus is still smiling.  Alec feels a bit like he’s at the eye of a hurricane.  Magnus says the word  _ date  _ so casually, and to Alec, who has never really dated in his whole entire life, that still feels a bit like he’s getting a mild electric shock every single time.  

But he supposes he’s going to have to get used to it, now.

“Okay, yeah.  That sounds good.  Just tell me when and where.”

 

* * *

 

_ Oh, Magnus, you’ve done it again.  How do you get yourself into these situations? _

Even as he walks along the street, tugging his thick red coat a little tighter across his chest to beat out the New York autumn chill, Magnus already knows the answer to that question.  It’s the eyes. Alexander Lightwood has  _ such _ pretty eyes, all two-tone green with flecks of hypnotising gold in them, and Magnus could stare at them for hours.  Somehow, eyes like that always end up getting him into trouble.

They’ve only ever shared one class, a philosophy seminar almost a year ago, but Magnus actually  _ had  _ spent almost every hour in that class staring at Alec’s eyes.  He’d never been more grateful to be sat at a round-table for a seminar group.  And though Alec never said much in class, he always sounded so serious and smart and like he really thought about things  _ deeply,  _ and Magnus had harboured a bit of a crush without ever speaking to him for the whole first half of the semester.

Then, they’d been assigned groups for their end of semester project.  Magnus had felt absolutely no shame when he went to their professor and completely invented a ‘scheduling conflict’ just so that he could be assigned to Alec’s group, instead of the one he was  _ supposed  _ to be in.

He’s just not sure how that’s led him  here _.   _ Heading to a bar to meet his friends, about to claim that he’s moving in with a secret boyfriend of five months that he’s never told them about.  A boy that he actually would very much  like  to be his  _ real  _ boyfriend.

Only, that’s never going to happen, because it turns out that Alexander Lightwood is a very traditional guy, and he’s waiting for  _ the one.   _ Magnus shouldn’t be surprised.  A guy as great as Alec Lightwood probably has a really, truly brilliant soulmate out there waiting for him.

But none of that matters now.  All that matters is that for the next two months, Magnus is going to be pretending to be his boyfriend, and he’s gonna make the most of those two months while he’s got them.  His last couple attempts at relationships have ended disastrously, so he’s actually not that upset about a chance to play around with some of the performative intimacy of a relationship without having to worry about any of the actual pressure.  The only problem, of course, is that it involves telling his friends.

Quite how he’s going to bring it up, he hasn’t yet decided.  But as he reaches the door of their favourite bar, where they’re all meeting up for Dot’s birthday, he’s running out of time to plan, and even with his and Alec’s cover story for their ‘secret’ beginning to the relationship, he’s still not sure how he’s going to convince his friends all of this is a good idea.

_ Oh, I’ll just come up with something in the moment _ , he decides, and walks into the bar.  He’s good at improvising.

“Magnus!” 

“Magnusss!”

“ _ Mag!” _

As soon as Magnus enters the bar, he’s met with an enthusiastic round of greetings, and Dot and Catarina’s hands both immediately grabbing onto his sleeves.  They all started the party several hours before him, by the looks of it. There are already at least three rounds worth of empty glasses in the middle of the table.

“Well, I see none of you wasted any time getting the party started.  You couldn’t wait for me?” Magnus teases as he shrugs off his jacket and slides into the booth they’re crowded around.  He grabs Raphael’s drink -- always sure to be a fruity cocktail with far too much sugar for someone as passionate about dental hygiene as Raph is -- and takes a huge swig, much to Raphael’s very vocal irritation.

Magnus just ruffles his hair, and downs the rest of the drink.

A few of the people gathered around the table are Dot’s other friends, who Magnus doesn’t know very well, but all of his own favourites are there too -- Catarina and Ragnor and Raphael, all of whom have been taking such similar tracks with their undergraduate degrees that they’ve been thrown together in class after class and spent more time together than Magnus probably has with any other group of people in his life.  By this point, there’s nothing which could unstick the unbreakable bond they’ve forged through countless hours of pre-med stressing.

Magnus reminds himself of that, as he orders a drink of his own and gears up for the biggest lie he’s ever told his best friends.

It’s not like they’re all truthful all the time, of course, or that he thinks they’d even be  _ surprised  _ to know he was making another terrible romantic choice by pretending to be in a relationship with someone for money.  Raphael would probably just roll his eyes to the heavens and not say anything, and Ragnor would start some long sarcastic rant about Magnus’s IQ before everyone got sick of him talking and plied him with more alcohol.  Dot might be a bit upset by the lying, but even Catarina would probably just shoot him one of her  _ looks _  and end up laughing . __ Still, Magnus knows that they can’t have a bunch of people running around talking about him being in a fake relationship, if he and Alec are ever gonna get away with it for the next two months, so this has to be done.

...But first, he’ll have a couple more drinks.

As the night progresses a little, Dot’s other friends start to peel off, and when the last of them heads off to the bathroom for a moment, Magnus finally sees his opening.  He takes a healthy slurp of his martini before setting it down onto the table, and then clapping his hands on either side of it.

“ _ So,”  _ he announces, and the table pauses in conversation.  Everyone looks at him, and even though Dot’s eyes are definitely alcohol-fuzzy and Raphael looks like he could fall asleep at any moment, at least Magnus has their attention.  “I actually had something I wanted to tell you all. See, I’ve been --  _ seeing  _ someone.  It’s rather serious.”

He’s not sure what kind of reaction he’s expecting, so it’s not disappointing when he doesn’t really get one at all.  Dot just blinks -- but she’s  _ definitely  _ drunk and he’s not even sure she’s processed what he said -- and Ragnor raises an eyebrow.  Catarina gives him the beginnings of a smile, but she always knows when something else is coming, and she’s clearly caught on that Magnus isn’t just announcing this for the sake of it.

“Mm’kay, but is there a ‘but’ coming?” she asks, taking a meaningful sip of her drink.  Her eyes lock onto Magnus’s for a moment, and he feels utterly read.

“Not a  _ but.   _ Actually, an  _ and.”   _ This, of course, is where the ruse really gets tricky.  He’s lucky for the dim lighting and background noise of the bar, or he’s sure everybody would be able to see his brain whirring behind his eyes.  “The thing is, it’s been going on for a little while now. We didn’t tell anyone because he was still in the closet until -- well, until  _ very  _ recently, let’s say.  But now that’s he’s out, we’ve… decided to take another step.”  A pause, and finally, he just blurts it out. “He’s moving in with me.”

And that.  Well. That news makes everyone take him seriously, at least.  It even seems to sober up Dot.

The silence around the table lasts for maybe ten seconds.  And then, of course, in his typical fashion, Raphael is the one to break it.

“Terrible idea,” he says, simply, and stands up from the table to go and get another drink.  Ragnor lets out one of his unattractive little snorts of laughter, as if it wasn’t clear that he’d agree with that already.  It’s the exact opinion Magnus expected from both of them, and he finds himself grinning just a little at how comfortingly predictable they are.

“Really, friend?” Ragnor says, fixing Magnus with one of his driest looks ever and leaning across the table to him.  “After all the trouble you’ve had rushing into things in the past, you want to do  _ this  _ again?  How long have you even known this lad?”

“Oh, leave him alone.”  Cat swats Ragnor on the arm, even though she doesn’t look thrilled herself.  “Magnus, this does seem pretty --  _ quick.   _ For someone who’s never even met your best friends in the world, as well!  But you know we’ll support you, so long as you’re happy.”

That’s three reactions down.  He looks across to get Dot’s -- but, oh, she’s fallen asleep with her head on the table.

Yeah, he definitely picked the right time to make this announcement.

“Thanks, Cat.  We know it seems out of the blue, but really, to us it wasn’t.”  A total lie, any way you look at it -- even their decision to _pretend_ to be dating was rushed -- but Magnus decides that one more lie at this point doesn't matter.  “Your support means a lot, though. I promise you’ll get to meet him soon.”

Actually, Alec meeting them is one thing Magnus is kind of looking  _ forward  _ to.  He just doesn’t see how anyone could manage to not be charmed by Alec Lightwood.  They’ll probably all understand why Magnus would move in with him at the drop of a hat, if they get one look at his kind hazel eyes and huge biceps.

“Okay, well, I’m going to get another drink, but don’t think you’re getting away without giving me deets!  I expect to hear  _ everything  _ about your new gentleman in a minute.”

One of the things Magnus likes best about his group of friends is that none of them have met their soulmates.  In fact, of the whole bunch, Dot is the only one who even really  _ wants  _ to meet hers.  Catarina likes her independence, and Ragnor finds love exhausting, and Raphael would far rather focus on his education than waste time with another human being right now.  For a lot of people out there, Magnus knows the first thing they would have focused on would have been that he was moving in with someone who  _ wasn’t his soulmate.   _ But his friends only care that he’s moving in with someone who might not make him happy.  Magnus’s thoughts on his own soulmate are fraught at best, and the fact that he gets to have friends like these, his little oasis of similarly broken people in a soulmate-obsessed world, makes everything feel a little better.  Maybe he really could be happy in something like what he’s going to pretend to have with Alec. Maybe he doesn’t need his soulmate at all.

Catarina trails the same direction as Raphael had, and that leaves Magnus with just one (conscious) friend at the table.  He turns to face Ragnor, and for a moment, they just meet each other’s eyes in silence. Magnus holds his gaze firm. Ragnor raises a single eyebrow.

When they’re not teasing each other or bickering relentlessly, Magnus and Ragnor actually have a very quiet sort of friendship.  It’s one of the things Magnus loves most about it -- Ragnor always gives him time to  _ think.   _ He adores all his friends, of course, but Magnus is pretty sure that he and Ragnor are the deepest thinkers out of all of them, and sometimes they meet on that analytical level in a way which is impossible to fake.  Despite his prickly-pear outsides and constant streams of sarcasm, Magnus always seems to go to Ragnor first with his serious life issues, and Ragnor’s always there to listen, no matter how many times he threatens that he won’t be.

After a minute, Ragnor breaks the silence, but his tone is different now that nobody else is there.

“So you’re  _ sure  _ this is a good idea, then?”

“Yes.”  Magnus’s heartrate picks up a little bit.  He wonders if maybe he’s making too big of a deal of this -- but then he thinks about Alec Lightwood, thinks about helplessly crushing on him, thinks about his own loneliness and the fact that he’s increasingly sure he’s never going to meet his own soulmate -- and.  Well. Magnus has always loved love, more than anything. He wants to be  _ in  _ love for a little while, even if it’s just pretending.  And getting some extra cash is going to seriously help out his bills, too.  “Yes, Ragnor, I’m sure. You know, I actually think you’ll rather like him.”

“Mhmm.”  Ragnor doesn’t seem convinced by that, but he lets it go.  “Well. You know, I’m sure there are some out there who would say your tendency to throw yourself head-first into these things is your best quality.  At least you’ll have no regrets of missed opportunities, when you’re old and grey and remembering all your foolish stumbles in youth. Hold on to that, if nothing else.”   
  
It’s probably the closest Ragnor has ever come to a heartfelt speech of confidence in Magnus’s choices.  Magnus is touched.

“You old softie,” he says, and clinks his class against Ragnor’s in the smallest of toasts.

Just as the others start returning from the bar and Ragnor quickly reassembles a scowl on his face, Magnus’s phone bleeps in his pocket.  He pulls it out, only to be met with a new text from Alexander Lightwood flashing across his screen.

Magnus can’t help but smile down at his phone.  Now that his friends know, he can get into the  _ fun  _ of the next two months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what will happen when the study actually begins? find out tomorrow morning when i post the next chap ;)


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and now, the actual study begins! 
> 
> ♥♥♥

‘Moving day’ arrives sooner than Alec expected.  Over the week, he and Magnus have gone on several more coffee dates and even to dinner a couple of times, and he’s been constantly flustered and having so much fun that he keeps almost forgetting the point of why they’re doing this.  But it’s a lot harder to forget that Sunday morning, when he’s standing outside Magnus’s place with two boxes of random possessions in his arms, ready to go and pull some sort of scene-staging miracle and make it look like he lives there.

Once he’s been buzzed into the building and trailed up four flights of stairs, Alec rings the bell, and Magnus immediately opens the door to his apartment with a flourish.  He’s barefoot and wearing cropped sweatpants and he looks about the cosiest thing Alec has ever seen.

“Does even your casual, chilling-at-home-on-a-Sunday-morning look  _ really  _ include jewellery and eye glitter?” he can’t help but ask, as he plods into the apartment and dumps his boxes down by the door.  Most of the place appears to be encapsulated in this one room -- from a spacious double mattress to a sofa to a tiny kitchen counter crammed into one corner -- but it’s a nice size, for a student apartment.

“Well, of  _ course.   _ And that’s the first thing my serious boyfriend should know about me, so note it down,” Magnus retorts, fiddling with one of his intricate rings and grinning.

Alec can’t help but smile back, feeling almost like someone has physically hooked the corners of his mouth up for him.  How is everything about Magnus’s energy so infectious? For a moment he can actually do nothing but look at Magnus’s smile, feeling a little too warm for no reason.

The air between them somehow feels warm, too, as they stand there in their extended moment of silence.  It would be awkward, except they seem to have forgotten to  _ make  _ it awkward, so instead it’s just nice and Alec feels weird and for the millionth time he wonders if this was a terrible idea after all.

Then, Magnus clears his throat.

“Right!  Let’s get started, shall we?  We’ve got a home makeover to do!”

 

* * *

 

Calling it a  _ makeover  _ is certainly extreme, but Alec had picked up a healthy variety of his own possessions, and together they sprinkle them throughout the apartment.  His Foreign Literature textbooks go on the shelves with Magnus’s medical texts, his battered combat boots line up next to Magnus’s silver dress shoes by the door, his pragmatic 3-in-1 bodywash is flung into the shower amongst an array of fancy sandalwood-scented shampoos.  They even find space for one of his old martial arts trophies on a shelf with some of Magnus’s beautiful Indonesian ornaments.  Alec feels a bit like they’re spies, or at least kids playing a very convincing  _ game  _ of being spies, and it’s a thousand times more fun than he expected.  As they work, they naturally fall into playful bickering, the likes of which Alec is only really used to from his siblings.

* * *

 

“Alexander Lightwood, I would  _ never  _ let you leave your laundry lying around the place.  Put it in the hamper!”

“Magnus, they won’t  _ see  _ it in a hamper -- the whole point is to make it _look_ like I live here.”

* * *

 

"Seriously, you have an entire  _shelf_ of alcohol?"  


"You're clearly not doing college right if you don't think that's normal, darling.  Just find somewhere else for your laptop!"

* * *

 

"This coat is a travesty, Alexander."  
  
"It's warm!  What does it matter how long it is?"  


"I'm going to alter it for you as soon as you leave, there's nothing you can do to stop me.  Your possessions are under my control now."

* * *

 

On one wall, Magnus has a wide array of framed photographs of him and his friends.  There don’t seem to be any of  _ family  _ that Alec can see, but he refrains from asking about that because he doesn’t want to open up some horribly sensitive topic.  Instead he just adds a couple of pictures of his own family, and one of a kendo bout a couple of years ago where he and all his friends in class had lined up for an official picture.

“Won’t it look a bit weird that we don’t have any photos of  _ us  _ up there?” he points out as he’s swapping a frame.  Magnus’s eyes light up.

Which is how they end up putting on three different outfits and taking a string of selfies in different vague-looking locations around the apartment to make it seem like they have a rich and varied life.

“This is  _ way  _ more effort than I thought we’d be putting into this,” Alec says, as he stands on the street outside Magnus’s apartment, shivering in a t-shirt which is far too thin for an autumn evening.  

“We have to make it convincing, Alexander!  Different photographs for different seasons!”  Magnus is definitely having way too much fun with this.  He slots himself under Alec’s arm and leans back against the brick wall to take another selfie.

His body is really warm, and feels way too natural pressed against Alec’s like that.  Alec doesn’t really know if he should be relieved or miserable when they pull apart again, and Magnus begins trekking back up to his apartment to print the photos out.

(That photo does turn out nice, though.  Alec makes it his phone background.  Just to be convincing, of course.)

Once they stick a few of those into makeshift frames, they step back to admire their work.  It really, truly does look like the apartment of a serious couple. He has no idea how they managed to make their lives look so intertwined in just a few hours.

“Ha,” says Magnus, as they stand shoulder-to-shoulder and look at the photographs of themselves on the wall.  “Wow. Now it almost feels weird that you’re  _ not  _ actually sleeping here tonight.”

Alec’s mouth goes dry.  Not  _ completely  _ dry, but maybe 10% drier than usual.  10% drier than usual could easily be a coincidence, he tells himself, and doesn’t think about the double bed just a few metres away from them, doesn’t think about how Magnus’s shoulder is just a fraction away from touching his, doesn’t think about how everything in Magnus’s apartment smells like him and it’s all soft spice and there’s probably  _ definitely  _ something illegal and addictive in his shampoos because Alec wants to just smell this for the rest of time.

Okay.  Maybe his mouth is 20% drier than usual.

“Well,” he says, with his dry mouth, and the odd tense energy of the room splinters at once.  Magnus turns to him and smiles, clearly completely unaware to Alec’s internal awkwardness. “I should get going.  But this was, uh, good. It definitely looks like we’re madly in love, right? So, I’ll see you tomorrow. At the study rooms.  For our first -- meeting.”

“Perfect!  Let’s meet outside, five minutes before?  Then we can walk in holding hands.”

He winks.  He’s either joking or not joking, and Alec can’t decide which option he prefers.  His mouth is definitely 30% drier than usual.

“Cool,” he says, and gets ready to flee the apartment.  “I’ll see you then.”

 

* * *

 

In their first interview, the psychology students ask a lot more questions than Alec was expecting.

First, they want to talk to Magnus individually, and make Alec wait outside the room, sitting in one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs which have been there since at least the 1970s and scuffing his boots along the tile.  It takes half an hour just for Magnus to emerge, and then they want to talk to  _ Alec  _ by himself.  There’s three grad students interviewing him, and even though their questions are all pretty routine, things he and Magnus had planned for and come up with stories which definitely matched, he knows he's probably coming off rude and evasive with half of his answers.  He’s just  _ bad  _ at things like this.

They finish up with him a lot quicker than they did with Magnus, presumably because he’s a terrible interviewee, and then they call Magnus back in for their joint interview.  It’s odd, but as soon as Magnus walks through the door, Alec suddenly feels more relaxed. He hadn’t even realised he was clenching his fist against his leg for his entire interview until it suddenly relaxes.

Magnus scoots the second chair so that it’s right next to Alec, and takes hold of his newly relaxed hand.  Alec’s brain short circuits. They’d  _ talked  _ about holding hands in the interview, to really sell themselves as a couple, and Alec had thought it would be no big deal.  But the mere feeling of Magnus’s soft skin, the press of his cold rings against Alec’s palm -- it’s all a  _ lot. _

Maybe the oversensation is a good thing, though, because it certainly gets him out of his head for the rest of the interview.  He chimes in with a few comments here and there, but mostly lets Magnus relay the fake story of how they met, and an anecdote of their first date, and how their relationship has changed since they moved in together (“he’s  _ awful  _ with remembering to put things in the laundry hamper but other than that I think I’ll keep him”).   The only time Alec gets uncomfortable when Magnus is there, actually, is the part where they inevitably ask about soulmates.  It’s not just soulmates, though -- they ask about soul _ marks.   _ Specifically, they ask what the first thing the two of them ever said to each other was.

“Well, we were paired up for a study group, so I just said ‘hi’ to Magnus,” Alec says.  “And he said, ‘is this study group?’. So.”

“And clearly, those greetings don’t match your own soulmarks.  Would you mind telling us what your marks actually say?” one of the students asks, her pen poised attentively over her clipboard.

Magnus, of course, immediately reveals his collarbone, which he’s always so open with, and the proud  _ hey!  _ scribbled across it.  But Alec’s stomach churns uncomfortably.  He can practically feel his hipbone heating up, hidden safely beneath his clothes where nobody can see his words.

“I’d rather not say, if that’s alright,” he mutters, actively forcing himself to not touch his hip.  “It just -- definitely didn’t match what Magnus said to me.”

Alec has always been shy about his mark, but that’s not unusual.  They’re a very intimate thing, especially when you have a whole phrase.  Plenty of people buy special jewellery or clothes with the sole purpose of covering up their soulmarks, and it’s actually  _ illegal  _ to force someone to bare their mark if they don’t want to.  The boldness with which Magnus displays his own mark is more common among people who have one-word greetings, sure, but it still makes him bold, still clearly shows he’s fearless in a way that Alec could only dream of being.

“Of course, that’s fine, Mr Lightwood,” the student says, and has the professionalism not to look at all disappointed as she notes something else down on her chart.  The topic changes away from soulmarks again, and Magnus squeezes Alec’s hand, and once again, Alec feels completely relaxed.

The interview ends pretty soon, after that.  But as they stand up to leave, Alec catches a glimpse of one of the grad students’s notepads.  One phrase immediately leaps into view. ‘ _ Alexander started tense, but completely softens around his boyfriend.  Clearly very in love _ .’

Alec’s cheeks go bright pink, and he quickly turns away.   _ That’s good,  _ he tells himself as they leave the room.   _ At least you managed to sell it.   _ For now, he’ll ignore the fact that his terrible acting skills had nothing to do with his response to Magnus’s presence.

“ _ Well,”  _ says Magnus, once they're safely away from the psych department and lingering at the end of the next corridor together.  “That went well, don’t you think?”

“Yeah.  Yeah, really well.  I wasn’t expecting it to be so -- _detailed_ _ ,  _ I guess, but all the questions were pretty simple.”   
  
All of a sudden, Alec realises they’re still holding hands.  They’re stood at the end of an open corridor, where anyone could see them, and they’re _holding hands_.  It’s not that he wouldn’t want anyone to see that -- they’re literally  telling  people they’re a couple, the exact opposite of hiding -- but it just feels so wildly different to anything Alec has ever done before that he doesn’t know what to do about it.  Almost as if he realised in the exact same moment, Magnus suddenly untangles their fingers, and takes a step back.

“You have nice hands,” he says, completely casually, as if that’s the sort of compliment you can just  _ give  _ to people and expect them to not explode slightly inside.  “Well, I should head home, get some studying done! Shame I won’t see you tonight at  _ our  _ apartment.”

He winks, a playful smile on his face, and Alec doesn’t know what to say.  He’s aware that it’s completely insane, but all he wants to do is suggest that he really  _ does  _ go back to Magnus’s place.  That he stays the night, to stay true to their ruse, or so that they can go over their story some more, or just so that they could get take-out and study together and hang out some more.

He just keeps thinking about that student’s notebook.   _ Alexander softens around his boyfriend.   _ That’s how Alec has felt today, while Magnus was holding his hand in that interview -- softened.  It’s not something he gets to feel very often. It’s not something he really gets to feel  _ ever. _

But it would be completely crazy to suggest a sleepover at his fake-boyfriend’s house, when they’re completely on the same page about this just being for the money.  Nobody’s checking up on whether Alec sleeps there tonight, so there’s no point in doing it. 

And then there’s the other big, huge, never-going-away problem: Magnus isn’t his soulmate.  So Alec has no interest.  When he meets his real soulmate, Alec is sure he’ll be able to make him feel a hundred times more relaxed than this.  Right?

“Yeah, great, okay.  Have a good night, Magnus,” he says, and they part ways.

 

* * *

 

In the week that follows, Alec has  _ never _ been so grateful for his heavy courseload and part-time job and chaotic siblings whose lives he needs to constantly micromanage.  He’s ridiculously busy, but at least it keeps his mind off Magnus.  Well, at least  _ some  _ of the time.

They text pretty regularly throughout the week, of course.  And they meet up for coffee twice, and then once more when they happen to bump into each other in the canteen and sit together, because it all gives them a chance to go over more details of their fake relationship, and learn stuff about each other that might come up.  The more they know about each other, after all, the less Alec has to be nervous about pulling this off. For that and no other reason at all, it’s great to hang out with Magnus a bit more.

Still, he really  _ has  _ been mostly focusing on other things, so their second weekly interview rolls around alarmingly quickly.  And this time, it’s not so easy as the first -- this time, the psych research professor and one of her interns are coming to Magnus’s  _ apartment,  _ to do what is clinically titled their ‘home-life observation’ for the entire of Saturday morning.

He arrives at Magnus’s place an hour before their session is supposed to begin.   _ Just to be sure I’m on time,  _ Alec tells himself, although he still feels ridiculously keen as he rings Magnus’s bell long before he actually needs to be there.  But it doesn’t seem like Magnus minds. He opens the door seconds later, already dressed to the nines despite the early hour. The only incomplete part of his outfit is the fact that he’s barefoot again, so Alec toes off his own shoes at the door, too.  This is their  _ home,  _ after all.

“Good morning, boyfriend,” Magnus says, laughing as he reaches out to pat Alec’s arm.  Before Alec can decide on the appropriate greeting back, Magnus is already whirling around, padding his way through the small apartment towards the kitchen counters.  Alec follows, but not before taking a quick glance around to see if the apartment has changed since he was here the week before.

It hasn’t, and it’s still kind of weird to see his own stuff lying around everywhere in a home that isn’t his.  Even though he was the one who  _ put  _ it all there, it hits Alec rather suddenly that he hasn’t really missed his smattering of possessions, because he deliberately picked ones he wouldn’t need the next few weeks -- hoodies he rarely wears, textbooks for classes he’s already finished -- but Magnus has been  _ living  _ in the reality of their fake relationship all week.  Looking at those fake pictures of them on the wall and everything.  It must have been weird. He wonders if it made living alone seem more lonely, maybe, to have it  seem  like another person should have been there.  That’s stupid to think, though, when he doesn’t have a clue what’s been going through Magnus’s head -- for all he knows, Magnus adores living alone and wouldn’t want it any other way.  

Still, Alec takes a moment to process how weird it feels to see his own knickknacks scattered around somebody else’s space, and by the time he has, Magnus has reached the fridge.  

“I thought we could have breakfast together!” he chirps, completely unaware of the mental journey Alec is going on.  “Really help sell it when they arrive, you know?  Plus I make a mean French toast.”

Alec had cereal before he came over, but Magnus is already starting to get pans out of the cupboard, and he really doesn’t have the heart to say no.

“That sounds great, actually.  Can I help?”

“Of course!  Do you cook?” Magnus asks it with such sincerity that Alec can’t even hold in his laughter.  Standing next to Magnus at the cramped kitchen counter, watching as Magnus stares at him with a carton of eggs in hand, he bumps their shoulders together through his giggles.  He’s totally just doing that to be friendly and not because the warmth of Magnus’s shoulder against his is mildly intoxicating, of course.

“Er,  _ no.   _ It’s something in my family, I swear.  I’m not as bad as my sister, but none of us can cook anything more than instant noodles.”  Alec pauses, and then adds, as he realises he’s not selling himself very well, “But I’m good at following instructions when  _ other  _ people are cooking.  My mom made sure of that.”

“I can work with that,” Magnus says, and then, swift and unthinking, he bumps their shoulders together for a moment too.

Alec feels warm the second they come into contact.  But that’s probably because Magnus has just turned the stove on.

The next hour flies by, and when the buzzer finally rings from downstairs to announce that the research professor has arrived, Alec has almost forgotten what they were even here to do.  It’s hard to remember anything about a study while he’s washing up a mountain of dishes at the sink, watching Magnus clean egg off the wall and tries to convince Alec that his toast-flipping technique is still _totally_ valid.  The interruption of the doorbell is so jarring that Alec almost drops a plate, and has to take a few deep breaths while he finishes up the rest of the dishes, and Magnus grabs the door.

It’s the first time they’ve actually met the psychology professor who’s running this whole study.  All the interviews at the university are being run by grad students, but he’s conducting the home observations.  He’s a pretty normal-seeming, middle aged white guy, although one thing stands out right away: his soulmark is displayed, stark and proud, across the side of his face.  Alec almost feels uncomfortable meeting his eyes when he walks through the door, just because it means staring at his mark, which is such an intimate thing. But Professor Parrish clearly doesn’t care, holding himself confident and open as he reaches out to shake both their hands.  Alec has to quickly wipe the suds off his palms before his handshake.  Behind the professor is a girl, presumably his research intern, whose face is mostly hidden by the huge stack of papers she’s holding and rifling through at the same time.

“Nice to meet you both,” Professor Parrish says, as he stands back and glances around the apartment.  “Well, I’m sure you’ve already been primed on what the observations will be like, so please, don’t mind us.  Is it alright with you both if I take a quick look around? We’re very interested in particularly the outward presentation of non-soulmate couples, especially 

“Oh, of course!”  Magnus immediately goes into host mode, something Alec should have anticipated he’d be great at.  “Well, it’s really just this room, as you can see, but let me give you my little tour anyway.”

He briefly touches the crook of Alec’s elbow, giving him a little smile, and then whisks off back into the main part of the room to show Professor Parrish around.  Alec decides to leave him to it, given that in reality this is only Magnus’s apartment and a tour from Alec would probably be more hurtful to their cause than anything.

But that, of course, is when the research intern suddenly emerges from her stack of papers, and Alec realises that he  _ recognises  _ her.

“Hey, wait -- Lydia?  We have a couple of classes together, don’t we?”

Her face brightens as soon as Alec asks, and she flicks one of her sensible braids over her shoulder.

“That’s right!  Hey, it’s great to see you outside of the classroom.”  She glances around the room, and all of a sudden Alec feels remarkably less comfortable -- this is somebody he  _ knows,  _ looking around here and thinking it’s his real apartment.  Looking at all his carefully-placed possessions among Magnus's.  Judging them against what she already knows about him in her own head.  “I never knew you were in a relationship. I mean, not that we’ve talked much, but just, you know -- it’s one of those things you hear through the gossip chain, when you take obscure classes like ours.  I always figure everyone knows everyone.”

The pit of Alec’s stomach drops, just a tiny bit.  It’s not like she’s challenging him. It’s not like she’s saying she doesn’t believe he’s really dating Magnus.  There’s not even anything in her eyes which says she might  _ think  _ that.  He’s sure she’s really just trying to be friendly, and make conversation.

But it suddenly seems a lot more real.

“Yeah, well, you know.  I’m a pretty private guy.  And I haven’t really been --  _ out  _ to the world at large, until recently.”  It’s the default line he and Magnus decided to use as an explanation for their hidden romance, but it’s also true.  In reality, his parents still don’t know, but even casual college friends knowing that he’s gay is pretty new for Alec.  He’s definitely jumped right into it.

“Well, hey, good for you!  You guys must be super comfortable together, if you're willing to get overanalysed by a bunch of psych majors like this, so congrats.”  There’s a brief pause, where Alec desperately doesn’t know what to say, and Lydia seems completely unbothered by his lack of response and simply up in her own mind.  Then she adds, “Now that I think of it, you probably know a bunch of the interns on this study. You've hung out with Ben and Lena and Taylor from Psychology in Literature this semester, right? They’re all doing it!  I’ll drag them over to come meet your shiny new boyfriend next time we see the two of you around campus.”

She smiles at him, friendly and businesslike, and completely unaware to the fact that panic is suddenly setting into every single one of Alec’s nerve-endings.

All he can think about is this whole last week.  He and Magnus have gone to the coffeeshop together, what, a couple of times?  They haven’t held hands around campus since that first interview day. They haven’t sought each other out, or tried to really act like a couple to the world at large.  In Alec’s mind, pretending to be together was solely going to be for the two sessions a week where they’d take part in this study. He hadn’t even thought about the fact that the students and professors working on this might see them around the campus, might notice things  _ outside  _ of their scheduled sessions.

If he and Magnus want to get away with this, Alec has a feeling they’re gonna have to step up their game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things which could possibly be in the next chapter:
> 
> a) a comprehensive set of rules   
> b) drunk magnus???  
> c) alec meets one of magnus's friends? TWO of magnus's friends??  
> d) my favourite minor character cameo  
> e) cUdDLiNg>????  
> f) more hot chocolate
> 
> tune in later today to find out which of those i just made up and which are real ;)♥


	4. Chapter Four

That afternoon, Alec and Magnus sit down together at a coffee shop far, far away from campus.  Alec orders black coffee, and Magnus orders a huge hot chocolate with sprinkles and whipped cream on top.  And then, together, they draw up a list of ways to make themselves convincing.

“Right, so.  We have to make sure nobody we know, or nobody who’s on the study, sees us doing anything un-coupley and gets suspicious.  Right?” Magnus begins, gesturing with the long teaspoon from his drink.  Alec nods.

“That's about right, yeah.  I’m just not -- not really sure  _ how  _ to seem like a convincing couple, so if you have any ideas…”

Apparently, that’s all it takes to make Magnus’s eyes light up.

“Oh, I have  _ so  _ many ideas.  You know, I wish  _ real  _ relationships involved meetings where you could make lists of demands about how affectionate people had to be.”  He pauses for a moment, while Alec just stares at him awkwardly in a haze of no-relationship-experience. Then Magnus shrugs, and carries on, “So, I suppose there’s lots of little gestures we can do. Holding hands, obviously. We should make an effort to meet when we’re free on campus, and walk each other to class!  And how comfortable are you with kisses? You know, just on the cheek?”

It feels slightly pathetic to Alec to admit that, at age twenty one, he’s never actually had a proper kiss before.  Instead of saying anything about that, he just nods.

“Sure.  Kisses on the cheek are fine.  That’ll, uh -- that’ll definitely help sell it.”

“Great!  Okay, and then there’s the other thing,” Magnus says.  Alec freezes for a moment.  _ What other thing?   _ “I think you should actually come and sleep at my apartment!  At least on weeknights. I live so close to campus, and my building is full of other students, who are always coming and going.  If anyone notices you walking back home to your old place every night, and never emerging from my building in the morning, it could definitely seem odd.”

Even as he rattles off the logic, Magnus sounds completely chill with this idea.  Alec, who is absolutely nervous to his core about the thought of  _ actually  _ sharing a one-room apartment with an extremely crushable guy who still happens to not be his soulmate, doesn’t want to let on at quite how horrifying he finds the idea.  So, he just says:   
  
“Yeah.  Yeah, you’re right.  That’s a good idea.”

It’s only six more weeks.  Alec can survive six weeks without  _ totally  _ losing his mind, right?

 

* * *

 

The next day is Monday.  Alec has three classes on Mondays, and he goes to them all like usual, except this time, he makes several long detours throughout his day to walk Magnus to and from his own classes.

Alec has never had a boyfriend, so he’s never really understood that thing of going out of your way to  _ walk someone  _ somewhere, as if they’re not totally capable of putting one foot in front of the other and navigating their way to their own damn classes, like they’ve presumably been doing for their whole lives.  One day of doing it with Magnus, though, and he’s converted. Magnus holds his hand several times while they walk through the centre of the campus, and Alec feels like his whole arm is tingling for most of the day.

And then, that night, after he finishes his 6 o’clock class, Alec goes back to Magnus’s place.

It shouldn’t feel like a big deal.  He’s been there before, after all.  But somehow he really feels like this is his first day living with someone, and it's petrifying.  He brings Chinese takeout to pre-emptively makeup for his complete lack of cooking ability, and they eat together on Magnus’s couch while a terrible martial arts movie plays on his laptop -- Alec mercilessly critiques the movie as it plays, and Magnus keeps laughing so hard that he almost chokes on his chow mein. But Magnus also has a test the next day, so after that he banishes himself to his desk on the other side of the room to study, and Alec stays on the couch and watches a documentary with headphones in, and they don’t really talk until it's time for bed.

Then, Magnus says: “You’re welcome to the couch, of course, but this is a very big bed and I’m happy to share.  I promise I don’t hog the covers.”

Alec’s brain temporarily shuts down.  Although it only lasts for a moment, the thought of being curled up next to a soft, sleeping Magnus, close and warm under the same duvet, just the two of them in the dark intimate space of the apartment -- well.  He’s pretty sure it might kill him.

“The couch is good,” Alec squeaks.  The couch is lumpy and at least half a foot too small for his legs to not stick off the end.  But at least it’s  _ safe.   _

Magnus gives him a bit of a look, but just shrugs.  “Well, if you change your mind, I’ll be right here!”  

He pats the very comfortable looking mattress, which in the space of the small apartment is only a couple metres away from the couch anyway.  Alec decides to escape to the bathroom, rather than think about that anymore.

After cleaning his teeth and putting his pyjamas on, Alec also splashes his face with cold water, and stares at himself in the mirror for a moment.   _ This crush is out of hand,  _ he tells himself sternly.   _ It doesn’t matter whether you want to cuddle him for the entire night and see him without his makeup on and kiss his fingers.  Those feelings will go away.  He’s not your soulmate.  _

Maybe he’ll just have very, very early nights every time he stays at Magnus’s.  Like, go to bed right after dinner. Then he can avoid this problem for the rest of their time.

 

* * *

 

Magnus startles awake in the dark hours of the morning, his whole body drenched in cold sweat, his breath coming out in fast pants.   _ A nightmare.   _ Nights free from bad dreams are rare for Magnus Bane, but this the worst one for quite a while.  Usually, he can just roll over and go back to sleep, but tonight his whole head feels cold when he raises a shaky hand to wipe his brow, and his heart won’t stop pounding.

There’s no way he’s gonna be able to go back to sleep.  This happens sometimes -- it’s just one of those things that has become a fact of his life.  With the room lit only by the orange mist of streetlamps outside filtering in through the drapes, Magnus rolls out of his bed, and starts heading over to his little kitchen.  

There’s one thing he’s forgotten, though.  He’s not alone in his apartment tonight.

Alexander’s head, ruffled with bedhair and bleary half-closed eyes, emerges over the back of the couch a moment later.

“Magn's?” he mumbles, one broad hand coming up to rub at his own face.  Magnus watches him in the dim light, and for a moment, Alexander looks so sleep-peaceful that Magnus’s restless heart actually starts to calm down.  “You okay?”

“Just a bad dream,” Magnus says, his voice coming out far weaker than he ever usually lets it.  “I’m just going to make a hot drink, to try and calm down. You can go back to sleep.”

But of course, Alec doesn’t do that.  He sits up even further, swinging his legs out from under the spare duvet on the sofa, and fixes Magnus with a bleary look.

“Don’t be dumb,” he says.  Even right after waking up, his voice is deep and steady enough that it somehow fills Magnus with a sense of relief, like the very vibrations of Alec’s voice are building solid foundations for Magnus to lean on.  It’s a bit like magic.  “You sit down here, I’ll make you a drink. What do you want, hot chocolate?”

Hot chocolate is exactly what Magnus wants.  It’s what he always drinks to calm himself down after a bad dream.  How does Alec know that?

In the moment, he can do nothing but nod, and sit down on the couch.  It’s warm where Alec’s been sleeping on it, and Magnus pulls the duvet over his own knees, trying not to feel odd about the fact that it’s Alec’s body which made all of this so cosy.

In the near-black darkness of the apartment, just the two of them in this one small room, everything feels intimate.  Magnus can hear Alec’s breathing, every shift of his bare feet on the floorboards -- he can smell the crisp scent of Alec’s generic shampoo when he sits back down, close to Magnus, and hands him his drink.  Even though Magnus was sweating and boiling a minute ago, he suddenly feels like there’s nothing more he wants than the warmth of Alec’s body, like he’s freezing cold without it.  But Alec’s right there.  Strong and steady and reliably warm, right beside him, not asking for anything or saying anything, but just  _ staying. _

They sit up together in silence, just listening to the sounds of each other’s breathing, until Magnus’s heart calms down completely.  He tries not to feel sad when he crawls back into bed alone.

 

* * *

 

During the home observation that week, they decide to cook lunch together.  It takes them an hour to make a stew, and they spend most of that whole hour bickering (“I can’t believe I’m cohabiting with someone who doesn’t even know how to pronounce  _ tomato  _ right ––“ “––you’ve just never seen a potato before in your life, have you? I can’t believe it, we’ve solved it, Alexander Lightwood doesn’t understand the concept of a root vegetable––“).  Alec actually forgets he’s supposed to be pretending to date Magnus and just keeps teasing him, and then suddenly when they finish cooking, he has an internal freak-out that they just gave themselves away.

Apparently, though, he needn’t have worried.  As the psych team leave, the only thing Lydia says to him is, “You guys are  _ such _ a cute couple.”

 

* * *

 

Alec goes back to sleep at his own apartment, over the weekend.  It was in his and Magnus’s original agreement about this, after all -- it’s unlikely anyone from college will notice that Alec isn’t emerging from the right apartment on mornings they don’t have class, and he won’t be walking the wrong back back from campus or anything, so it’s pretty safe to get some distance from their ruse.  And it’s not like Alec’s been away from home for a  _ whole  _ week.  He’s popped back to get clothes and some notes for class, a couple of times, and to water his spiderplant, because Izzy definitely can’t be trusted with that.  But still.  Actually coming home on Saturday morning, throwing his jacket down and settling into his own bedroom to hang out in there all day, feels ridiculously bizarre.

This is  _ his  _ room.  It shouldn’t feel weird.  But as he lays there and looks around, Alec is suddenly struck by how little of himself is in this bedroom.  Half his possessions are at Magnus’s, and even before then, most of his things don’t really say much about him.  Alec doesn’t  _ decorate,  _ except to stick a few pictures of his siblings on the walls and prop up a few kendo trophies here and there.  He’s nothing like Magnus, who could give personality to a space just by stepping foot into it.

Alec lets himself get absorbed in his own weird melancholy for most of Saturday, slumping on his bed to watch random Netflix documentaries about soulmark science, and occasionally poking at his hipbone, where his own mark is obscured under his clothes as always.  He stays that way until Izzy pokes her head through his door at dinnertime, her hair tied on top of her head and a bundle of snacks in her arms, and shoots him a  _ very  _ unimpressed look.

“Can I help you?” Alec snipes.  She throws a wasabi peanut at him.

“Quit moping over the boy I  _ told  _ you that you should date for real, and come Skype Clary with me.  She’s got gossip.”

Alec doesn’t really care what Clary’s gossip is, but in the interest of not having to hear Izzy talk about  _ his  _ love life anymore, he follows her out.  At least it takes his mind off Magnus.

 

* * *

 

In the third week, Alec finally has to do the one thing he really, truly,  _ genuinely  _ didn’t wanna do.  He has to meet Magnus’s friends.

It’s not that he thinks they’ll be bad people.  Not at all. Knowing Magnus’s taste -- and all he’s said about them -- Alec is fully expecting a quirky, eclectic group of people who are all sharply witty and loyal to their bones.  Which is usually the kind of person he gets along with great.  But it’s just  _ weird.   _ Alec has  never had to meet the friends of someone he’s dating before, because he’s never  _ dated  _ anyone.  And this isn’t even real, which makes it worse somehow, as if he suspects they’re gonna sniff out his imperfect intentions like bloodhounds and immediately ban him from finishing the study  _ or  _ having anything to do with Magnus ever again.

But that’s ridiculous, he knows.  And Magnus keeps insisting that meeting his friends is non-negotiable.  So.

They go to a party.

It’s a bit of a compromise, because Alec figures that at least other people will be there to distract Magnus’s friends from solely interrogating him all night.  And there’ll be booze. Getting everyone else drunk is his best strategy of how to get along with new people.

Getting ready for the party feels remarkably domestic, but Alec’s trying not to focus on that.  Magnus chooses a shirt for him and then swats Alec’s shoulder until Alec sits down and lets Magnus fuss with his hair for a while, and Magnus asks Alec’s opinion on three separate equally-sparkly outfits, and as they walk over there, their fingers are intertwined the whole way.

There’s probably no reason to be holding hands until they’re actually around people they know, but.  Still. Alec supposes you can never be too careful.

The party is being held at the house of someone Magnus doesn’t know, apparently, but they second they walk through the door they’re grabbed by several sets of hands who absolutely have been waiting for them.  The first person to introduce herself to Alec is Dot, who he quickly establishes is the most enthusiastic of the bunch of them. She kisses both his cheeks, while Alec stands there blinking and embarrassed, and denounces him  _ totally cute. _

“Took you long enough to introduce us,” says the other woman who Alec quickly figures out must be Catarina, as she’s dragging them inside the house and towards the alcohol.  “ _ So,  _ Alexander.  I’d better give you the lowdown.”

“ _ Please  _ be gentle with him,” Magnus implores, where he’s being pulled along behind them by his hand still joined with Alec’s.  Catarina acts as if he hadn’t spoken at all.

“Ignore everything Raphael says, he’s a snarky bitch but it all comes with love.  Ragnor’s a grumpy grandad trapped in a suffering twenty-two-year-old body who refused to come tonight, so you don’t need to worry about him yet, although he’s going to want to interrogate you at some point.  Dot’s had two bottles of peach schnapps so she might tell you some embarrassing stories about Magnus and she’ll probably try and slap your butt as soon as she gets you on the dancefloor.  That’s the primer for tonight.”  The party is loud and dark and full of drunk people stumbling around them, but Catarina has somehow navigated them to a pile of cold beers. She presses one into Alec’s hands. “The primer for the rest of time? Magnus has  _ very  _ protective friends who love him very much -- I’m sure you can see why --“

“He’s very lovable,” Alec agrees, amusement tugging at the corners of his lips.  Magnus has put his forehead against the wall and is groaning, loudly and dramatically, but Cat completely ignores him.

“ _ Exactly.   _ So you’ll probably get killed if you break his heart.  Nothing personal, since we don’t know you at all yet, but I’m just giving you the heads up.”

“Uh, I appreciate that.”  This is still pretty funny and Magnus’s clear frustration makes it even more amusing, but there’s a  _ definite  _ sincerity in Catarina’s voice when she mentions murder that he wonders if he ought to be concerned about.  Especially considering they’re gonna be faking a break-up in like, a month. He decides to write the concern off for now, mostly because everyone’s drunk, and also Magnus has removed his beautiful face from the wall to come and wrap an arm around Alec’s waist, which essentially removes Alec’s ability to think at all.

For just a moment, he lets himself stare down at Magnus, a little hypnotised.  When he glances back up, the first thing he notices is Catarina grinning at him.

“Oh, you’re winning points already,” she tells him, and opens his beer.  “Right, come on. Time to tell me everything about yourself.”

 

* * *

 

 

A full hour later, after having been glared at by Raphael and chatted to by Catarina and, indeed, had his butt slapped by a very drunken Dot, Alec finally finds a moment alone.  The others have all splintered off to see other friends, and Catarina dragged Magnus off for a no-boyfriends-allowed gossip session -- in her own words -- so he finally gets a moment to breathe, pressing his back against a wall in the least populated area of the party and settling into to people-watch for a minute.  The party is increasingly loud with the sort of music Alec would never  _ ever  _ choose to listen to, and busy enough that everyone looks sort of sweaty and warm from the pressure of the other bodies around him, and it’s really not his scene.  Despite that, he’s had an unexpected amount of fun so far.  Magnus’s friends, especially Catarina, really do seem easy to get along with, even for Alec who is notoriously anti-social.  Regardless of how nice they are, though, he’ll never pass up a moment alone when he’s somewhere as crowded as this.

So, of course, his solitude lasts about one minute, before his name is suddenly being called again.

“Lightwood, hey!”

Alec looks around as soon as he hears his name, and then, to his complete surprise, is met with the smiling face of one of his  _ own  _ friends.

“Oh -- hey, Underhill!  I didn’t know you’d be at this party.”

Steven Underhill might not be Alec’s best friend in the whole world or anything, but he’s definitely a good one.  They’ve been the only two gay guys in their mixed martial arts class for nearly five years, now, and that comes with a special sort of bond.  He’s one of the only non-relatives who Alec voluntarily meets up with to get coffee and gossip about the annoying people in their class. 

“Yeah, man, this is my roommate’s girlfriend’s place.  I’m here all the time.”

Underhill is always chill.  Judging by the near-empty forty in his hand, he’s pretty wasted, but he seems as calm and friendly as ever.  He offers to get Alec a drink, and as they spend the next twenty minutes in the kitchen chatting about Steven’s boyfriend, Alec almost forgets why he’s at this party in the first place. 

That is, until a familiar hand suddenly slides into the small of his back.  Alec, who usually jerks away from being touched unexpectedly as if he’s been electrocuted, doesn’t even startle.  He just leans into the touch, and turns around to meet Magnus’s smiling face.

“Hey,” Alec says, reaching out to bump Magnus’s shoulder.  Magnus has acquired a bright red cup and a flush to his cheeks, so he’s presumably been drinking a bit more than Alec.  “Lost you for a bit, there. You having a good time?”

“A great time!  My friends love you,” Magnus announces.  His voice is even brighter than usual and his words blur just a little bit together -- he’s definitely tipsy.  His hand slides all the way around Alec’s waist, then, which of course drags Magnus’s body closer too, so he leans into Alec’s side.  Alec is most certainly not complaining. “Who’s this cutie?”

Oh.  Right.  Underhill is still there.  At some point Alec’s going to need to issue a formal apology to everyone he knows for quite how much the rest of the world disappears whenever he looks at Magnus.

“Oh yeah, this is my friend Steven.  We know each other from martial arts stuff.”  One of Alec’s hands is taken up with his beer and the other is now bracketed in the warm centre of Magnus’s back, so he can only gesture vaguely between the two of them.  “Underhill, this is Magnus. My -- boyfriend.”

Underhill smiles, and gives Magnus a quick look up and down.  Alec’s just busy being thankful that Magnus hasn’t got drunk enough to blurt out something like  _ syke!  We’re faking the whole thing and I could do way better than Alec Lightwood anyway! _

“You never told me you got a  _ boyfriend _ .  Wow, it’s weird to think of you with someone, you’ve always be so anti-dating.  Clearly we’ve been neglecting our hangouts.” There’s never anything bitter in Underhill’s voice, just friendliness and  _ maybe  _ a hint of teasing now and then, but he does sound rather hesitant when he adds, “Should I ask soulmate or not-soulmate?”

“Not soulmate,” Alec says, rather definitively.

And then, mouth moving against Alec’s shoulder and words coming out sing-song-drunk, Magnus adds, “But it  _ feels  _ like it.”

Which.  Well. Alec doesn’t disagree.  But he doesn’t know what to say to that.

They’re not soulmates, and they’re not even really dating, and they’re not  _ anything.   _ And even drunk, Magnus is just playing along with the ruse, saying the things he thinks people need to hear to believe them.  It’s only Alec wishing all this was real.

For the rest of the night, Magnus doesn’t leave Alec’s side again.  Either something significant happened in his conversation with Catarina, or he’s just a happy drunk -- either way, Alec’s not complaining, because he gets to have Magnus’s warm body draped all over him for several hours.  They hang out with Magnus’s friends for a while and Underhill for a while too, and then both at the same time, and the fact that Alec and Magnus’s friends all get along with each  _ other  _ feels very good.  Very right.

Eventually, Magnus turns to sleepy-drunk, and Alec decides to take him home.  They say goodbye to all of Magnus's friends, but while Dot is giving one last enthusiastic hug to Magnus at the door, Underhill catches Alec one last time.  He seems even drunker, and even more chill, as he pulls Alec aside by the elbow and smiles at him.

“Hey, man, I know you’ve always been all about the soulmate thing, but I just wanted to say it’s good to see you so happy.  It’s so obvious you guys are great together.  Don’t let anything hold you back, okay?  I can tell you’re really in love.” And then, while Alec stands there and absorbs that for a moment, Underhill claps his shoulder cheerfully.  “Get home safe.”

Of the whole night,  _ that  _ is mostly all Alec can think of, for the whole cab ride home.  He doesn’t know if he should be pleased their acting is working, or worried that he wasn’t even  _ trying  _ to act.  Because if he wasn’t trying to fake this, then to the outside world, he looks like he’s really in love with Magnus.  And that’s too intense. That’s  _ way  _ too intense for a three-week-nothing with a guy who isn’t even his soulmate.

And then.  They get back to the apartment.  Magnus is drunk, and Alec is drunk, and his back has been really hurting from sleeping on the too-small couch.

“Just crash in the bed with me,” Magnus mumbles, while he’s pulling off his pants and crawling under the covers in his underwear.  Alec is trying really, really hard not to look, but he’s doing a terrible job.  Magnus has such nice thighs. “Promise I don’t bite.  An’ it’s a king mattress.”

Alec isn’t sober or sensible enough to resist.  He builds a half-hearted blanket wall between them, and climbs into Magnus’s bed.  The second his head hits the pillows, which are cotton-soft and smell like Magnus and sandalwood, Alec is asleep.

It’s the best night’s sleep he’s ever had.  The next morning, he doesn’t even wake up until Magnus has already left for class.

 

* * *

 

In Alec’s individual interview that week, the psychology grad students mostly just have him fill out a survey about his exposure to soulmate-related media in childhood and how it influenced his perception of non-soulmate couples.  But then, towards the end, they ask him some more questions. And there’s one in particular which Alec can’t shake off for the whole rest of the day.

“What did you think the first time you saw Magnus?”

In a lot of these interviews, they’ve had to lie their way through questions.  That’s the whole nature of what they’re doing, after all — faking it, making things up to seem convincing, changing their own lives and their own views to match up with what will get them paid at the end of all this.  But right then, for once, Alec feels like he can tell the truth. Because he remembers that moment exactly.

“I thought,  _ he’s the most stunning man I’ve ever seen.   _ And then I thought,  _ I wish he was my soulmate.” _

“But he wasn’t.”

“Yeah.  But he wasn’t.”

 

* * *

 

There’s a lot less confidence than usual in Izzy’s voice when she calls him in the middle of one day, while Alec’s on shift at the bookstore. 

“Hey, big bro,” she says tentatively, and before Alec can respond, she adds: “So, we just got some bills in the mail.”

Her uncertain voice makes all sorts of sense, then.  They’ve been trying not to talk about it too much, in the knowledge that soon enough, Alec will get paid for his participation in this study and then they’ll have enough to pay off their bills and the rest of their rent for the month.  But the truth is, until that happens, they  _ don’t  _ have enough.  Not even close.  And the letters are starting to pile up.

“Just put them with the others,” he tells her, shelving a book about pelvic fractures on the medical shelf.  At least that makes him grateful that they don’t have any medical bills to pay off, too. “We’ll figure it out at the end of the month.”

He’s just not quite sure  _ how. _

 

* * *

 

The weekend passes uneventfully, Alec mostly working at the bookstore or alone at his and Izzy’s apartment, although his phone does keep blowing up with texts from Magnus the whole time.  On Monday, his class is cancelled, so Catarina end up taking Magnus and Alec to a second-hand book fair. Magnus holds his hand the whole time and makes snarky comments in Alec’s taste in historical literature, and comes away with an armful of science textbooks that he makes Alec carry.  They bump into one of the grad students running the study, and Alec suddenly feels like he’s having every minute aspect of his body language and conversation analysed while she briefly says hi to him and Magnus.  Other than that, though, it’s all very nice.

But that night, Alec sleeps on the couch again.  They seem to have made some silent agreement to never talk about their sleeping arrangements the night of the party.  And it’s not even like that was  _ scandalous  _ or anything -- they didn’t even touch, they were just two guys sleeping in a room together and  _ happened  _ to be on the same mattress, which is no different than sleeping in separate beds pushed close together, or side-by-sleeping bags when you’re camping like Alec does with his brother.  Really. There’s nothing to it.

But the couch seems way, way more uncomfortable, afterwards.  And on Tuesday night, he just thinks  _ screw it.   _ Maybe it’s because Alec has only ever shared a bed with his siblings, but he just doesn’t think it can be  _ that  _ big of a deal.

“Is it okay if I share with you, tonight?” he asks, through a mouthful of foam, as him and Magnus are brushing their teeth side by side at the tiny bathroom sink.  Magnus meets his eye in the toothpaste-flecked mirror.

“Of course,” he says, shrugging like it’s no big deal at all.  His artfully-baggy sleep shirt is slipping down one shoulder, exposing part of his soulmark like it so often is, and he gently bumps into Alec with that side.  Alec’s chest flushes warm. “My bed is always open -- you should know that about me by now.”

He winks, which cuts the weirdness a bit.  Still, Alec goes and fusses around with his textbooks for a bit, until Magnus has his eyes already, before he carefully climbs into the other side of the bed.  

 

* * *

 

 

The next morning, Alec finds himself swimming back towards consciousness before his alarm goes, the noises of the awakening city filtering in through the open window above their heads and bringing him into to the early morning.  At first, he’s aware of nothing but the sounds -- birds chirping on the rooftop, cars honking below, the screech of one police siren zipping past. The sounds, and the fact that he’s comfortable.  _ Really  _ comfortable.  His whole body feels warm, and he doesn’t really think about  _ where  _ he is, just that he’s hugging a pillow to his chest and it’s softer and nicer and smells better than any pillow he’s ever hugged before.

Then the pillow shifts in his arms.  Alec lets out a soft noise, his eyes still scrunched shut against the encroaching daylight, and tightens his grip.  Why is his pillow trying to escape him? It stops moving, and he sighs happily, pulling it even closer -- pillows shouldn’t move, so he’s glad it stopped.

Wait a second.  

Pillows  _ don’t  _ move.

Also, he’s pretty sure this pillow has ribs.  And is breathing.

Alec’s eyes fly open and --  _ oh _ .  Yep.  Suddenly, he’s wide awake, because he’s not cuddling a pillow at all.  Instead, at some point in the night, he and Magnus have moved from their opposite halves of the bed to the very middle, and Alec has his arms wrapped all the way around Magnus’s waist.  Their bodies are completely flush, his face buried in Magnus’s hair, which explains why everything smells so strongly of his delicious shampoo. Alec is pretty sure his head is going to implode and when Magnus wakes up there will be nothing but fragments of skull all over the mattress, because he’s immediately having a million thoughts at once.  Most of those thoughts boil down to two things.

  1. _ohmygod this is so awkward he’s gonna hate me if he wakes up i need to let go right now and get out of bed and move to Cambodia just to be safe._
  2. _this is the most comfortable I’ve ever been.  I didn’t know this was why people liked cuddling. the thought of letting go of Magnus right now makes my chest sore._



After a few seconds, the second sort of thoughts have completely overtaken the first.  Alec is absolutely  _ aching,  _ like his whole torso has been hollowed out and filled with nothing but icy cold air, when he thinks about untangling himself from Magnus right then.  Their legs are slotted together, Magnus’s bony ankles bracketed perfectly between Alec’s feet, and he can feel the rhythm of Magnus’s breathing as his body rises and falls against Alec’s chest, and where Alec’s nose is shoved against the base of Magnus’s hairline, face tucked against his neck and the soft skin exposed by the twisted neck of his baggy t-shirt, absolutely everything just feels  warm _.   _ Safe.  Like he never wants the sun to finish rising, never wants to leave this bed.

It’s probably because he’s never really cuddled someone before.  This must be how it feels with everyone, right? Maybe he’s just very, very touch-starved, and he’d feel this intense about anyone who got close enough.

Regardless, he doesn’t want to let go.  And when Magnus starts shifting, his eyelids beginning to flutter open, Alec makes a split-second decision and closes his own eyes again.  He tries to relax his face until it looks like he’s deep in sleep, and definitely couldn’t be at all responsible for the position they’ve found themselves in.  He’ll let Magnus deal with the awkwardness of untangling their limbs, and then pretend he never knew about it at all.

Except.  He can feel the moment Magnus realises how they’ve woken up -- he startles, and begins to move away, one of his hands going to Alec’s to pull it off his body.  But then he just…  _ doesn’t.   _ After a moment, the mattress dips again, and Alec realises that Magnus has just laid back down.  If anything, he’s pressing himself closer.

Alec’s heart is racing in his chest.  He wonders if Magnus can feel the frantic thump of it pressed against his back.  He wonders why the hell Magnus didn’t just get out of bed and laugh this off.

But Alec doesn’t want it to end, so he keeps his eyes closed.

He wishes it could go on forever, but it can only be about ten minutes until Magnus’s alarm clock is suddenly blaring out through the room.  Magnus immediately lunges out of the bed to silence it, like he maybe didn’t want Alec waking up, so Alec keeps his eyes shut for a moment longer before blinking a few times, raising one hand to rub his face as if he’s just coming back to consciousness.  Magnus is most of the way out of his grasp at that point, and Alec lets his empty arms drop down to the mattress, forcing himself not to think about the loss of contact. 

Magnus stares at him for one long moment, gives an awkward smile, and then crawls the rest of the way out of bed.

“Hah,” says Alec, although it’s not a real laugh at all, just him awkwardly pronouncing the word.  “Looks like we moved around a bit last night.”

“Clearly.”  Magnus looks almost flustered for a moment, but then he runs a hand through his hair, and as soon as it’s falling in an artful swoop rather than messy curls, his confident aura suddenly returns to him.  Adjusting his twisted-around t-shirt, he smiles and winks. “I guess you can only resist my charms in the light of day.”

Alec wants to say,  _ in what universe am I resisting your charms?  _ but he refrains.  That’s the sort of flirtiness he’s  _ not  _ delving into with someone who’s just a friend.  Just a business partner. And  _ not  _ his soulmate.

Even if he’s the best cuddler in the entire universe.

Magnus hasn’t moved from the side of the bed yet, even though he usually begins his morning make-up routine right after rising, so Alec starts climbing out from the duvet himself to try and escape the remnants of this moment.  Waking up with Magnus might have been the most comfortable thing ever, might have made his entire soul light up, but that’s just because he’s desperate and soulmateless and has a tiny crush, and it doesn’t make the aftermath any less weird.  He doesn’t want to wonder why Magnus didn’t pull away. It’s going to open doors he can’t think about.

There’s just one thing.

Moving around in the night has clearly made Alec’s shirt ride up a little bit.  There’s nothing technically wrong with that. He’s actually pretty proud of his abs and wouldn’t mind Magnus seeing them.  But as he drags the duvet off himself in his rush to dispel the weird moment, Alec forgets to think about the one,  _ one  _ thing that is most important to him.

The soulmark on his hip is completely exposed.

It takes him a full second to realise, and when he does, Alec’s brain flashes with a lightning storm of panic.  He yanks his t-shirt down, a bright blush spreading across his cheeks immediately, and snaps his head across to look at Magnus.  He knows that wasn’t long enough for Magnus to read the words, but the fact that he saw even a little bit is too much for Alec to handle.  That’s more intimate than Alec has ever been with  _ anyone. _

“Sorry,” says Alec, holding onto the hem of his shirt tightly, although he doesn’t really know why he’s apologising.  Not everyone is Magnus -- hardly anyone, actually, is cool just walking around having their  _ words  _ on show.  Hardly anyone even wants to show them to people they’re close to.  “It’s just, I’m -- pretty modest about my soulmark.”

“Hey, I get it.  Like I've said before, I like that you’re a traditional sort of guy,” Magnus reassures him.  But Alec’s not dumb. He can see that in Magnus’s eyes, there’s nothing but burning curiosity.

Alec doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, so he quickly excuses himself to go and get ready in the bathroom.  The last thing he wants to do is talk about soulmarks with Magnus.

It’ll just make him feel worse that it isn’t Magnus’s words on his hip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll post the next chapter tomorrow morning !! hope you guys are enjoying so far :D


	5. Chapter Five

The awkwardness of their close call with Alec’s soulmark doesn’t linger for long.  He does spend most of the next day debating whether or not that awkwardness outweighs the positives of sharing a bed with Magnus, but even though he knows he shouldn’t want it so much, a deep, selfish part of him just keeps remembering how good it felt to wake up with their bodies wrapped together.  So he doesn’t go back to the couch, and they keep sharing.

For a few nights, he somehow manages to bully his subconscious into staying still the whole time he’s sleeping, and there are no more awkward wake-up moments.  But then he goes back to his own apartment for the weekend, and when he comes back to Magnus’s on Monday, he’s missed him. It’s probably only natural that they wake up completely wrapped around each other the next morning.  And the one after that.  And the one after that.

Every time they wake up together, there’s a weird sort of tension that Alec doesn’t understand.  But it’s always gone by the time they’re bickering over what to have for breakfast, so he decides it definitely doesn’t mean anything.  

The whole situation with Magnus is unusual, so there’s really no precedent for how either of them should behave.  That doesn’t mean he’s in too deep. Magnus is just a friend. A friend who Alec wishes was his soulmate, but who isn’t, and who Alec only has the most  _ mild  _ of crushes on because Magnus is an incredible person, and they have to act as if they’re madly in love to the outside world while being completely platonic in private, even though Alec half wishes they really were the way they’re pretending to be, except he doesn't, because he'll never love anyone the way he loves his future soulmate.  Oh, and he’s gonna go broke if they get caught doing any of this. It’s no wonder the lines are getting a little bit blurred in his head.

But they only have three more weeks to keep this up.  After that, he’ll move back into his own place and his own solitary bed, and it will all get much clearer again.  Alec’s sure.

So he decides to enjoy this while it lasts.

Of course, not  _ every  _ aspect of it is something to enjoy.  One particular thing which Alec notably does  _ not  _ enjoy is when the researchers turn up for their home interview that week, and casually announce that today, their questions will all be about intimacy and sex.

Alec turns bright red the second they say it.  Magnus, on the other hand, gets a near gleeful look in his eye, and leans forwards on the couch.

“Ask away!” he says cheerfully, and a small part of Alec dies inside.

The thing is, Alec doesn’t think he’s exactly a _prude_ , and he doesn’t think he’s exactly innocent.  He knows how sex  _ works.   _ He’s heard plenty of details about it.  But, like with everything in life, he’s been holding out for his soulmate, so he’s never experienced even a hint of that sort of intimacy with another person.  The closest he’s had to a kiss is Magnus kissing him on the cheek while they walk around campus, and that’s only in the last three weeks.   He doesn’t have a fucking clue what to say to this, and honestly, he’d rather talk about  _ anything  _ else.  His deep seated daddy issues?  The damage done by years of repressing his sexuality?  All better topics than his sex life.

This is clearly just another case of him and Magnus being complete opposites, though.  The ever-clinical Professor Parrish starts asking questions with no more interest than if he were asking what they like to eat for breakfast, and Magnus immediately leaps into it, giving more details than they’re even really asking for, a wicked look in his eyes as he makes it all up on the spot.  

“Does seeing each other’s soulmarks and knowing you’re not soulmates ever reduce the intimacy you feel during sex, or create an otherwise adverse reaction?” Professor Parrish asks, clipboard poised at the ready.  Another psych intern is sat next to him, and Alec can only thank the lucky stars that it’s not Lydia or someone else he shares a class with, this time.

“Oh, not at all,” Magnus says cheerfully, plonking one of his hands down onto Alec’s knee while Alec just sits there, completely rigid and awkward.  “We’ve never had the mindset that we’re somehow  _ missing out  _ on our soulmates by being together.  And a soulmark is just another part of your lover’s body, isn’t it?  Something else to have fun with.”

Professor Parrish doesn’t say anything, just scribbles on his clipboard for a while.

“And would you say the time it took you to become physically intimate at the start of your relationship was affected by the knowledge that you were not soulmates?”

“No, I wouldn’t think so.  It took us a few dates, but there are plenty of people who don’t jump right into bed with their soulmate the moment they find each other, right?  Building up your emotional intimacy first always helps if you want the sex to be  _ really  _ good.”  He smirks at Alec, and Alec’s face goes redder than he ever thought possible.

And then, two seconds later, it goes even redder.

Because right after he’s finished saying all  _ that,  _ Professor Parrish decides to ask a far more innocent question about sleep habits.

But Magnus responds with, “Oh, he’s  _ such _ a cuddler.  He’ll try and stay on his side of the bed at first, but the second he drops off to sleep, he rolls over and latches right onto me, and then he won’t let go until he wakes up.  If I try and get out of bed he just holds onto me tighter.  It’s  _ very _ cute.”

And then Magnus glances right at Alec, the most teasing he’s ever looked, and  _ winks _ .

Alec feels slightly like he’s having an out of body experience, and tries to push himself back into the couch in mortification.  Maybe he can disappear into Magnus’s fuzzy patchwork throw forever and never emerge. He hadn’t realised that Magnus  _ knew  _ that much.  Sure, they’d both been aware of waking up cuddling, but he’d thought they had some sort of silent agreement that neither of them knew how it happened and it never needed to be talked about.  But no. Apparently, Magnus is well aware of how they wind up that way, and it’s all because of Alec. Alec has never really shared a bed with anyone before so he didn’t  _ know  _ he’d have some ridiculous unstoppable penchant for cuddling, and he doesn’t have a clue how he could have prevented it, but he’s seriously wishing he’d just stuck to the hideously uncomfortable couch.

He can’t really blame his unconscious self for any of it, though.  Magnus is so warm and smells so good and is just the perfect size to cuddle with.  But in the  _ day,  _ Alec has enough sense to  _ resist  _ all those things.

That evening, after having dinner with Underwood and some other guys from their martial arts class, Alec comes back to Magnus’s apartment and suddenly feels awkward.  Magnus greets him as warmly as ever, and Alec’s stomach gets the same butterflies as ever, and they watch a movie together like has sort of become their nightly tradition.  But when it gets to bedtime, Alec finds himself lingering awkwardly in the middle of the room, glancing between the bed and the couch.

Was Magnus hinting that he was uncomfortable with it, earlier, by mentioning Alec’s accidental cuddling habit?  Did he just not know how to bring it up with Alec, so he used the interview as an excuse? The  _ last  _ thing Alec wants to do is make Magnus feel awkward.  And when Magnus first signed up for this, he didn’t sign up for sharing his bed, too.  Alec should offer to sleep on the couch again, right?

Magnus emerges from the bathroom, in his soft pyjamas with his makeup taken off and his hair brushed back from his face looking  _ utterly  _ adorable, and heads right to the bed.  He flips back the sheets and climbs in, takes several moments plugging in his phone and getting settled, before finally looking up. 

Then he spots Alec stood in the middle of the room, having a clear crisis of identity, and raises an eyebrow.  “Aren’t you coming to bed?”

“I --” Alec pauses.  “I was just thinking.  Maybe I should sleep on the couch?  If you want me to.”

Magnus looks like he has absolutely  _ no  _ idea what Alec has just said.  He might as well have been speaking martian.  

“Why on earth would I want that?  I didn’t notice you developing any hideous, offputting qualities over the course of the day.  Certainly nothing bad enough to lose my human space-heater, at this time of year.”

He grins across the room, clearly trying to lighten whatever weird mood Alec is in.

So apparently, Magnus doesn’t mind having a random friend force him to cuddle while he sleeps.  Or maybe he just doesn’t mind when Alec does it.  Either way, a little happy part of Alec’s stomach goes warm, and he gives up arguing, going to climb into the bed beside Magnus.  As soon as he’s settled, Magnus says, “Goodnight, Alexander,” and switches out the light.

Once his eyes adjust to the darkness, though, Alec rolls onto his side, and just looks at Magnus for a little while.  He falls asleep that way, to the image of Magnus Bane’s peaceful face an inch away from his own.

 

* * *

 

It’s the middle of the night when Alec is dragged out of sleep.  

“Magn’s,” Alec mumbles, bleary, rubbing his eyes to force them open.  “Wh’s goin’ on?”

The mattress is shaking, and it takes Alec a few moments to adjust to the darkness and realise that it’s because  _ Magnus  _ is shaking.  He’s perched on the bed with his knees curled up, the duvet falling off his shoulders like he only sat up moments ago, and now that Alec’s starting to come back to consciousness, he remembers the reason he woke up.  He heard someone scream. 

“Another nightmare?” Alec asks, voice low and just a little bit tentative, because he has no idea how Magnus feels about someone seeing him like this.  Magnus sucks in a few deep breaths, clearly trying to calm himself down.

“Yes,” he says eventually, after several long moments.  His voice sounds cracked, like his throat is raw-dry, and he’s so wrapped around himself that it doesn’t seem like he wants to be touched.  "But I'm fine."

Alec’s heart wrenches, and he doesn’t know what to do.    


Actually, as far as he knows, there’s only one thing Magnus does to deal with situations like this.  So Alec blearily swings his legs out of bed, and says, “I’ll make you some hot chocolate.”

 

* * *

 

Magnus has one hand on his own chest, still trying to take deep breaths and calm down his racing heartbeat, when Alec returns to bed.  He hands a huge mug of hot chocolate to Magnus, and then crawls back under the covers on his own side of the bed, leaving Magnus to sit there and stare down at the drink.  It has whipped cream and spinkles, and Alec has arranged the sprinkles in the shape of a heart.

Magnus feels like crying.  If Alexander Lightwood doesn’t stop being so damn sweet all the time, Magnus is pretty sure his chest is  _ never  _ going to stop aching.  

“I think I sort of… owe you an explanation.  About the dreams,” Magnus says, balancing his mug on his knees where they’re pulled up close to his chest.  With his ankles crossed and one arm wrapped around his own legs while the other one holds his hot chocolate, Magnus knows he probably looks more defensive than Alec’s ever seen him.  But he can’t help it.  This isn’t something he  _ talks  _ about.

“Magnus.”  Alec’s voice is quiet and serious, and he ducks his head to meet Magnus’s eyes in the dim midnight light.  “You don’t owe me anything. I promise it’s fine.”

A flood of relief rushes through Magnus.  After all, he’s barely opened up about the worst part of his past to  _ anyone,  _ even Catarina or Ragnor, and he probably shouldn’t start with someone he’s only known well for a month.  Someone who isn’t even really his boyfriend.  If Alec is okay with not knowing why Magnus wakes up screaming sometimes, then Magnus is certainly okay with not telling him.

...Is what he thinks, for about three seconds.

But as soon as he decides to not talk to Alec about it after all, just settle back in his arms and drink hot chocolate and not worry about any of this until the next nightmare rolls around, Magnus suddenly feels strange.  As if the pit of his stomach is being twisted around like a stress ball. He’s never wanted to talk to anyone about his past before -- about his _parents_ __ \-- but he knows that holding it all in hasn’t worked for him either.  And for some reason, the steady weight of Alec next to him on the mattress, the regular rhythm of Alec’s breathing and the heat of his body and the way everything about him is always just so even and right and  _ there,  _ is making Magnus want to talk.

He takes a first sip of his hot chocolate, and a deep breath.  There’s just something so intensely intimate about sitting with someone like this -- in the dark, under the same sheets, sharing your quietest moments.  He knows that soon, this will all be over, and he'll be sleeping alone every night again.  But until then, he finds himself wanting to confide in Alec more than he’s ever wanted to confide in anyone.

So, he does.

“When I was a child, I saw my mother murdered,” Magnus says.  “I’ve never been able to get rid of the nightmares.”

And just like that, he’s said it.  It’s the first time he’s ever said that so simply, so honestly, like he’s just cracked himself open at the ribcage.  And all of a sudden, his racing heart and nightmare-addled brain just. Calm. Right. Down.

“Magnus,” says Alec, voice low and careful.  Even after all these weeks, Magnus isn’t sure how the mere tone of Alec’s voice manages to make him feel so steady.  “That must have been awful.”

“It was.”  There’s no denying that.  Magnus curls both of his hands around the warm mug of hot chocolate on his knees, letting the pads of his fingers heat up, and stares across the dark room.  “There was other stuff, too. After that, I was raised by my father, and he was  _ not  _ a very nice man -- to put it mildly.  He’s in prison now, though, and I haven’t talked to him in years.”

“Magnus, I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, no, don’t be sorry.  I’ve learned a lot of life lessons from growing up that way, really.  Although I could do without the nightmares all the time --” He lets out a wry little snort of laughter -- “But other than that, I’m happy with where I’ve ended up.  I might not have any blood family to be around anymore, but I count my friends as my family. I suppose that’s why I’m so close to some of them. I just think all of it taught me, in the end, that it’s the bonds you  _ choose  _ which are the ones that count.”

Alec doesn’t say anything for a moment, after that, but when Magnus glances to the side, he sees Alec is staring right at him.  Magnus wonders if Alexander is thinking about the same thing he is. That in life, even more than family, there’s  _ one  _ very serious bond you don’t get to choose.  

Or do you?  Magnus knows what Alec believes, of course.  Alexander believes in soulmates more strongly than he seems to believe in anything else.  But it’s a little different for Magnus. His father, after all, was his mother’s soulmate, and he witnessed just how hideous that turned out, the lasting and nightmarish effect it had on all involved.  And Magnus is a lot like his mother. He’s always thought, at the back of his mind, that he’s probably going to end up with a soulmate just as awful as hers, because it’s just what happens to people like him.  So he's not too keen to meet whoever it is.  Actually, Magnus would be happy if he never had a soulmate at all, because at least it would probably spare him some pain.

After a long second of looking at each other, Alec slides one hand over to rest on top of Magnus’s arm.  Magnus’s heart slows all the way down. He finds, all of a sudden, that he can barely even remember his nightmare.

 

* * *

 

In their interview the next week, Professor Parrish asks, “Have you ever had a conversation about what will happen when one of you meets your actual soulmate?”

Alec and Magnus both go quiet.  Although Professor Parrish is sat a foot away peering at the pair of them over his glasses and a grad student is lingering by the wall scribbling down everything they say, Alec sort of feels like it’s only him and Magnus in the room.  Just for a moment.  Because that’s the real kicker of a question that befalls every non-soulmate couple, isn’t it?  What do you do when the inevitable happens?  How do you ever manage to make that decision?

“No,” says Alec, eventually, turning back to the professor.  “We’ve never talked about it.”

“But surely you’ve individually considered it, at least?”

“I think,” says Magnus, leaning forwards all at once, and pressing against Alec’s side.  Alec can’t help but melt into his body just a little, happily telling himself it’s just for show.  “We’ve always just felt like it wouldn’t matter. We grow up with a very binary notion of soulmates, but maybe, if you’ve really found someone you love this much and you’re not willing to give them up, fate would take that into account.  A soulmate could take another form, like platonic. Couldn’t it?”

The truth is, nobody knows.  There’s not really any definitive information on the different kinds of soulmates, because pretty much everyone, the second they meet their soulmate, just drops everything in life to be with them.  Whether that’s because their soulmate is so perfect, or just because society expects it so heavily that people don’t even consider there being another option, Alec doesn’t know. He supposes that’s why studies like this one are actually important.  Showing people there’s other options out there -- not just following fate’s path.

But Alec’s still on fate’s path.  Even if he has to lie and tell Professor Parrish he’s one of those rebels who doesn’t plan on falling in love with his own soulmate one day, it’s not true.  There’s nothing out there better than his soulmate, no matter how appealing it seems in the moment.

Under the table, Magnus puts one hand on Alec’s knee.  It’s completely out of sight of everyone else in the room, which means there’s no point to doing it.  But he still does.

 

* * *

 

That weekend, Alec doesn’t go back to his and Izzy’s apartment for two nights, like he has been since he started staying with Magnus a month ago.  He and Magnus don’t decide it, or even mention it at all, for the whole weekend.  Alec just… stays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're in the home stretch, now! the next chapter will be up soon, feat. more izzy than ever, a lot more hot chocolate, and SOMEONE having a bit of a freak out ;)


	6. Chapter Six

On Tuesday the 4th of November, Alec wakes up and realises something.  

They only have one week left.

One week, until Professor Parrish’s study is over.  One week until they have to tell all their friends they broke up, until Alec can collect his possessions from Magnus’s apartment and move back into his own boring, lonely little bedroom back at his place.  One week until he’ll never again have to share a bed, or a home, or even a kiss on the cheek, with Magnus Bane.

“We’ll still hang out after we 'break up', right?” Alec asks that afternoon, under his breath, as they sit together in the library.  Magnus has a huge exam for a medical research lab coming up, so his head is half buried in a textbook as big as him, even his usually-flawless hair looking a little frazzled and falling into his eyes.  Next to him, so close their elbows touch when they turn a page, Alec is reading Faust.

“Of course we will!” Magnus mutters back. Relief momentarily floods through Alec, but then Magnus carries on, “I mean, we’ll have to cut things off for a while to really sell the break-up, I imagine.  But after a little while we can start going out for coffee and things again. Like normal friends do.”

Alec’s stomach sinks.

Right.  That’s what it’s going to be, in the future.  He’s sure he and Magnus have become close through this experience, but the weird sort of tangled intimacy he’s become so caught up in isn’t going to last after the study is over.  It  _ can’t.   _ They’re going to part ways, and go on to be friends.  They’ll probably meet up a couple of times a month to hang out, and wave when they see each other on campus.  It’ll be like Alec’s friendship with Underwood. Someone he values, thinks is cool, enjoys time with.  But not someone he could lay in the darkness with and bare his soul.

_ Normal friends.   _ Alec goes back to Faust, but he can barely read a word for the rest of the day.  He just keeps thinking about how there’s never been anything  _ normal  _ about him and Magnus.

 

* * *

 

That night they get drinks with Dot and Catarina, who think Magnus needs to stop stressing about studying for his exam and blow off some steam for one night.  It starts out fun -- Alec even finds a beer he actually likes, and Dot beats him at darts several times while ribbing him completely -- but then, all of a sudden, it all gets weird again.  Weirdness just seems to be the theme of Alec's life lately.  They’re sat in a little booth at Magnus’s favourite bar, working on their third round of drinks for the evening, and Magnus has one hand sliding around Alec’s waist. And all of a sudden, Dot narrows her eyes at them.

“You know, you guys are such a private couple.  I’ve never seen Magnus be like this with someone.  Do you ever show affection in public?”

“You’re crazy,” says Catarina, rolling her eyes as she gestures to the pair of them.  “They hold hands  _ everywhere  _ they go, you know.”

“Well, yeah, but I’ve never once seen them  _ kiss.” _

Just like that, Alec’s mouth goes completely dry.

“Oh, come on, we’re just not so into PDA.  It’s not like I  _ never  _ kiss him,” Magnus says, gesturing at Dot with a cocktail umbrella and a tipsy expression.  “See, watch.”

And then, in the tight confines of their close seating arrangement, he turns to Alec.  

Alec’s whole world completely rewrites itself in the next moment.  He isn’t aware of anything other than his own face, and Magnus’s face looming closer, and the intoxicating smell of his sandalwood shampoo, and his big brown eyes glittering in the lights of the bar.  Everything about him is beautiful. Everything about him makes the floor disappear from under Alec’s feet. And Alec wants nothing more than to lean closer to him, too.

But is  _ this _ how he wants his first ever kiss to be?  Just a challenge, in front of other people, with a guy who’s not even really his boyfriend?  Not even his  _ soulmate?   _ None of that is ever what Alec thought, and it’s certainly not the reason he’s saved his first kiss all this time, so determined for it to be perfect, like something out of a real storybook.

But then, he looks at Magnus’s lips, and everything in his whole body just says  _ yes.  Yes yes yes.  Kiss him.  _ For the first time in his life, Alec decides to stop worrying about it, and give in to what he wants.  To  _ see  _ what this famous sensation is like, if it can possibly be as good as people say, even with someone who’s not his soulmate.  Alec decides to let himself  _ want. _

So that, of course, is precisely the moment when Magnus’s lips make contact with Alec’s cheek.

Oh.  Right.  Okay. He didn’t mean a proper kiss, then.  Magnus breaks away after pecking Alec’s cheek, and with just one more eye roll from Catarina, the conversation changes away from anything related to their relationship.  Alec’s cheek is tingling where Magnus’s soft lips were pressed against it, and he can’t keep track of what anyone’s talking about anymore.

For the rest of the night, there’s one thing that just becomes abundantly clear to Alec.

He's in too deep.  

 

* * *

 

It’s not like Alec sits down at that moment and thinks,  _ I’m going to pull away from him now.   _ But it just sort of… happens.

The next day, Alec leaves early for his class, and he doesn’t turn up to walk around campus with Magnus during the day like usual.  He’s slower responding to Magnus’s witty little texts throughout the day, until they slowly stop arriving altogether. He has dinner with Izzy instead of with Magnus, and when he gets back to Magnus’s place in the evening, he begs off their usual movie-watching routine by saying he has too much homework to do.  He puts in his earbuds and studies on the other side of the room from Magnus for the rest of the night, trying not to look up and spot that Magnus keeps glancing at him with confused, sad eyes.

They still share the bed that night, and they still wake up entwined together the next morning.  Ripping himself away before Magnus wakes up is one of the hardest things Alec’s ever had to do, and it hurts his heart and makes all sorts of unexpected parts of him feel hollow, but he just knows it’s for the best.

That day, he barely speaks to Magnus at all.  And the next day, too, every time Magnus tries to make plans or start up a proper conversation, Alec manages to dodge it.  He sleeps at Magnus’s apartment every night and wakes up there every morning, and puts on a good show during their interviews with Professor Parrish that week, but that’s  _ all  _ he does.

_ This is better,  _ Alec thinks to himself, repeatedly throughout the week, while the entire inside of his body flutters unhappily, near panic.  It hurts, but surely he has to be doing the right thing. In less than a week, he’s gonna move out of Magnus’s apartment, gonna have to pretend to break up -- and if they let things go the way they were going, that was going to be impossible.  Better to ease them both into it. Right?

What hurts the most, actually, isn’t how much he misses talking to Magnus, hanging out just the two of them when they had nothing to prove and were really just enjoying each other’s company.  That’s agony, but what hurts the absolute most -- is that Magnus doesn’t even ask him what’s going on. He just goes quiet, and stops trying to talk to Alec too, and accepts it all without a word, just a lot of staring with a hurt look in his eyes.

It almost seems like Magnus was expecting this to happen all along.

It's for the best, but that doesn't mean it doesn't suck.  The whole week, Alec is so miserable that he can’t focus on anything.  He’s pretty sure he totally bombs a quiz in his Classic Short Stories class, and he can’t even bring himself to care.

“Just go and  _ talk  _ to him,” Izzy pleads, while Alec is moping back on the couch at their real apartment, because he doesn’t want to have to spend a whole evening silently avoiding Magnus.  “For fuck’s  _ sake _ , big brother, I’ve never seen you this sad over  _ anything!   _ Why can’t you just be a normal human being and let yourself be happy, for once?”

“That’s not how it works,” Alec mutters to her, batting away her hands where she’s trying to fuss with his shirt.  “We’re breaking up in a few days. None of it matters, now, so I’m fine.”

Izzy doesn’t believe him.  Alec doesn’t really blame her.

As he walks back to Magnus’s apartment that evening, long after the sun has set, Alec actually finds himself on the brink of tears for a minute.  Which, out of everything, might just be the most ridiculous thing that’s happened yet. He can’t  _ cry  _ over a break-up which hasn’t even happened yet, with a boy who he was never really dating, and who isn’t his soulmate.  If you boil down all those key ingredients, they make  _ nothing,  _ and that should be exactly what Alec’s feeling right now.  Nothing.  Actually, he should be feeling  _ good,  _ knowing he’s about to get paid enough for this study to sort out his and Izzy’s rent, all without very much effort at all.

He doesn’t feel good, though.  Not at all.

Alec lets himself into the apartment, and Magnus barely even glances up from where he’s sat with his laptop on the bed.

“Hi,” Magnus greets him, voice sounding completely disengaged.  Alec’s stomach lurches like someone’s attaching a clamp to the inside.

“Hey.”

He sets up with his own laptop on the couch, and they don’t say another word until it’s time for bed.  Occasionally, Alec notices Magnus watching him, out of the corner of his eye. Magnus always has the same look: sad, but not surprised.

It’s somehow worse than if he was outraged.  Alec doesn’t want to feel like his own shittiness was  _ expected.   _ But he just has to keep reminding himself that this is better for both of them in the long run.  Better for both of them. Better for both of them.

Even if it feels like he's sort of breaking both their hearts.

Alec lets Magnus get into bed first, and turns off the light, throwing the whole apartment into darkness before he climbs under his own side of the covers.  This, Alec has figured out over the last month, is his kryptonite. When the two of them are in the dark, in the same bed, feeling like the whole outside world doesn’t exist… this is when Alec feels, simultaneously, more like his authentic true self than he  _ ever  _ has, and also so wildly free that he’s a different person altogether.  These times of night do strange, strange things to him.

But he only has to get through a few more nights sleeping in the same bed as Magnus.  Then, it’ll be over forever. And that’s a good thing.

Even though Alec’s heart is still aching.

“Well, goodnight, Alexander,” Magnus mutters into the tiny space between them.  Alec’s breath catches in his throat, and he forces himself to push through it. He can’t resist rolling onto his side, though, one hand curling up beside his head on the pillow, and staring across to the foggy profile of Magnus’s face in the darkness.  The way his nose curves down into the cupid’s bow of his lip is beautiful. The sharp jut of his Adam’s apple hypnotises Alec in place.  He wants to press his lips against it.

There’s very, very little space between them.  If Alec extended his curled-up fingers, he could almost brush the side of Magnus’s face.  And for some reason, he can’t make himself close his eyes. He just wants to stay in this moment.  Because every really horrible, achy part of his heart just keeps reminding him: he might not get another one like it.

And then Magnus, all of a sudden, turns his head.  And they’re staring right into each other’s eyes, across the tiny gap between their pillows.  Everything around them is dark, like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.  Alec feels like his own body doesn’t even exist.  Like he’s not weighed down by his soulmark burned into his hip. Like all that matters is how horribly, achingly sad he’s been this whole entire week, how much it has  _ sucked,  _ how much he doesn’t want to let go of Magnus, not not and not ever.

The tiniest movement: Magnus shuffles just a fraction of an inch closer, his face still pressed into his pillow.  And he just keeps staring at Alec with his wide brown eyes, filled with so many emotions that stoic Alec has never been able to understand, and even though the apartment is silent, it feels like Magnus’s eyes are  _ screaming  _ right then, like Alec can’t hear anything else.  And all he can see is Magnus’s face. And the curve of his cupid’s bow.  

For the first time in his entire life, Alec’s brain shuts down.

And the next thing he knows, he’s lunged across the space between them, and he’s dragging Magnus into a kiss.

It has all the secret feel of midnight to it.  Their lips meet, again and again and again, first a slow soft crush that Alec could drink for the rest of his life -- but then, it starts to fill up with passion.  Each kiss gets longer, and their fingers get more desperate where they clutch at each other’s faces, hair, bodies -- all just trying to get closer, just trying to lose themselves in it, in the darkness, in the heat between their bodies while their awkward limbs hook around each other, in the desperate noises escaping both their lips.  They roll in the bed, pushing and tugging at each other, until Alec finds himself pushed onto his back, and Magnus pulls away for just a moment, catching his ragged breath. His hands slide up Alec’s abs under his shirt, and Alec quivers all over, squirming to help Magnus pull his shirt up, forgetting absolutely everything except getting as much of Magnus on his body as he possibly can --

And then.  

And then, where Alec’s shirt is pulled up, Magnus’s eyes are on him.

On his  _ soulmark. _

The whole world freezes, ice-white and sickly, for a whole long moment.

“Why did you never tell me what it said?” Magnus asks.  His voice sounds completely raw, and it’s either from the kissing or something else, and every option is bad _. _

It hits Alec all of a sudden, what he’s just done.  The one thing he said he’d never do. He’s just  _ cheated  _ on his soulmate.  Every hot, passionate part of Alec immediately flashes to ice, the hideous way like when sweat dries cold, the way that feels  _ dirty.   _ He lets go of his grip on Magnus and scrabbles to pull his shirt back down, but it’s too late -- Magnus has already seen.  There’s no coming back from this now. Alec’s face flushes hot and his skin prickles uncomfortably all the way down his chest and he hates, hates, he hates all of it, he hates everything he’s feeling, he hates that he let himself be so  _ weak.   _ That he couldn’t wait anymore for his soulmate.  That he's let down all the devotion he's always claimed to stand for. 

“I -- I can’t do this.  This was  _ so _ wrong.  I have to go.” Alec pushes Magnus off of him, and then he nearly flies out of the apartment in the next moment.  He grabs his coat and his bag and his shoes on his way out, sparing only a moment to tug them on over the top of his pyjamas in the hallway outside, and then he’s off.  He can’t be there right now. He can’t think about what he just did. 

Every part of him feels sick, but he feels even worse knowing that, if he had the chance, Alec would take that kiss all over again.  Of course he would. He can’t imagine a first kiss ever feeling better than that, even if it was with his  _ soulmate.   _ Somehow, that's one of the worst things Alec has ever known about himself.

He gets back to his and Izzy’s apartment in the middle of the night, so he’s not expecting to find her up, but she’s actually sat on the couch with a bowl of cereal and a Netflix rom-com when he arrives.  She blinks and looks up as the door opens, clearly surprised to find him walking through it, but Alec doesn’t blame her.  He hasn't exactly been home much for the last couple of months.

“Alec?” she asks, pausing her movie immediately.  Her voice is flooded with concern. “Alec, what happened?  Why are you home? You look  _ awful.” _

“Thanks,” Alec snaps, but he’s too tired for his sarcasm to really hit.  He tugs off his coat by the door, and then heads right to the couch, throwing himself down next to his little sister -- for once, he doesn’t want to pretend that he doesn’t need her special brand of comfort right then.  He almost leaps right into telling her, but before he can, Alec hears the faint rustle of movement coming through Izzy’s bedroom wall.  He raises an eyebrow. “Someone else here?”

“Oh, that’s just Charlie.”  Izzy waves a hand like it’s not important, but this is the first time he’s heard the name.  “He has an early shift at the hospital tomorrow so I’m watching my movie out here, to let him get to sleep.”

“New boyfriend, then?” Alec guesses.  She nods. “It been going on a while?”  She nods again. “Shit. I really am a terrible brother for not knowing that, I guess.”

That, though, she immediately waves off.

“You’ve been fine, Alec.  You’ve had a lot on your plate lately -- mostly thanks to me, let’s not forget.  Come on, don’t worry about Charlie, just tell me what happened.”

Alec decides to schedule in a proper conversation with her about her life updates later, but for the moment, he lets it go, and just sighs heavily into her shoulder.  “It’s -- a long story. I’ve just made some really shit decisions with Magnus. I had to get out of there.”

To her credit, Izzy doesn’t bring him up on the fact that most of his decisions tend to be shit in general, and she told him he was making a mistake with this fake relationship from the beginning.  She just puts down her cereal, and reaches out to give him a hug.

“What went wrong, Alec?  It seemed like things were going so well with you guys, for a minute there.”

“That was the problem,” Alec admits.  His voice sounds hollow even to his own ears.  “This whole time, everything’s felt so natural and amazing with him.  I’ve never felt like that before. But that’s just made me terrified. If we carried on like this, we’d just be setting ourselves up to  _ both  _ get our hearts broken.  I don’t want that, and Magnus definitely doesn’t deserve it.  But we can't change the fact that we're not soulmates.” 

“Alec, you know I’ll support you, whatever you want in life.”  Izzy is stroking his hair while she pulls him close, into one of the tightest hugs Alec has ever had, and he’s never been more thankful for his little sister than in that moment.  “But all I can really say is this. The way you and Magnus look at each other? You can’t fake that. And you look at each other a  _ lot  _ like soulmates.”

 

* * *

 

Alec wakes up the next morning, cold and tangled in the sheets of his shitty single bed, to his phone bleeping several times in a row.  He blearily rolls over, definitely not having caught enough hours to sleep to recuperate from his emotional meltdown of the night before, to grab it. 

 

[ **REMINDER: YOUR EVENT TODAY:**

_**Final Research Interview: 3PM.** _ ]

 

[ **From: Magnus <3** ]

W _ill I see you at the interview today?  It’s fine if you hate me, but remember, we don’t get our money if we don’t show up to this on_ e.

  
Alec mutes his phone, and tries to go back to sleep.  The truth is, he doesn’t know  _ what  _ he’s going to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at the beginning i was trying really hard to make this a humour story but then it sort of.... got dramatic on me :') anyway, i hope you guys liked the developing tension -- the final chapter will be up tomorrow! <3


	7. Chapter Seven

Magnus Bane is very, very good at making himself look like he hasn’t been crying.

It’s a skill he picked up early in life.  It helps, of course, to have a reputation as someone who wears dramatic makeup anyway, and that he can use his generally wild fashion choices to distract the eye away from his miserable expression when he's sad.  Magnus has looking  _ fine  _ down to a science, and today, that is his only goal.

He doesn’t want to admit how much he’s been crying, even to himself, but the physical evidence is impossible to ignore.  He barely sleeps for most of the night, and when he does wake up, he’s cold. He’s hugged a pillow to his chest in the night, but it’s not moving.  When he gets out of bed and looks at himself in the mirror, his eyes look swollen and flushed red, and there are tear-tracks of his leftover eyeliner streaking down his cheeks.  He’s a mess. He looks like a mess, and he sure as hell  _ feels  _ like a mess.   But Magnus is very good at working from the outside-in.  He’ll work on how he feels later -- for now, the most important thing is fixing how he looks.

First, he has an ice-cold shower.  The underneath of his eyes are still all puffy and wounded-looking when he gets out, so he pats concealer all over his face as best he can, in tiny, careful little dabs of his index finger.  The best thing to do is be methodical about these things.  That’s what he always tells himself.  View it like a theoretical exercise, or something you can do with your brain switched off.  Don’t let yourself think about why you were sad in the first place.  Don't let yourself remember you were crying at all.

After he’s blended in his concealer and doesn’t look so red anymore, he gets out his most dramatic eyeshadow kit, and paints his eyelids in vivid swathes of blue, with sharp spikes of thick black eyeliner to cap it all off.  He hairsprays his hair as tall as it will go, and puts on a set of earrings that look like daggers, and all of his sharpest rings on every finger. He finds his combat boots with the silver spikes on the toes. Everything about his look, today, is  _ sharp.   _

The goal, Magnus tells himself, is to look utterly unapproachable.  Like nothing in the world could ever bother him.

Not even Alec Lightwood.  Not even having to sit in a room and pretend he’s wildly happy with a boy who kissed him and ran away.  Not even the memories of every other person who’s ever kissed him and run away, not even how much Magnus is reminded, every day, that he’s just not  _ worth  _ it.

Nope.  Nothing like that can bother him today.  Because his eyeliner's on point, and he's  _fine._

 

* * *

 

Alec almost doesn’t go to the interview.  He really, truly, almost decides to call the whole thing quits -- he’s on the brink of trying to transfer to a different college, if he’s honest, and make sure he never has to see Magnus Bane or deal with any of this confusing crap ever again.

But then he goes into the kitchen, and sees the stack of bills that Izzy has carefully filed on top of the fridge.  And he remembers why he got into this whole mess in the first place.

Izzy shuffles into the kitchen just moments after Alec, still rubbing sleep out of her eyes, her hair all frizzed out on one side and her feet tripping over the long hem of her pyjama pants.  As soon as she spots Alec, she comes to wrap an arm around his middle, and he gratefully receives the hug.

“You doing okay this morning?” she asks.  Alec swallows.

“I’m fine,” he assures her, and then wriggles out of her grasp.  “Here, I’m gonna make eggs. Do you want some? A proper breakfast for once would do you some good.”

Already, she’d been heading to the Lucky Charms in the cupboard, but she pauses to look at him with a raised eyebrow.

“You’re terrible at making eggs,” she points out.  “By the time I’ve eaten all the charcoal from you burning them, I might as  _ well  _ have just had cereal.”

“You have no faith in me,” Alec mutters, while he starts getting out a pan.  “Besides, I’ve gotten better. Mag --”

And then, all of a sudden, his throat stops working.   _ Magnus taught me,  _ he’d been going to say.  And they’d laughed and argued in Magnus’s kitchen for hours, doing more flirting than cooking, really, and it had been one of Alec’s nicest memories and he really  _ had  _ gotten better at making eggs, because Magnus is a good teacher, and Alec sort of wanted Magnus to teach him everything in the whole world.

Izzy, who has always been a little bit psychic about her brothers, seems to know exactly what’s made Alec suddenly freeze in the middle of the kitchen.  She pats Alec on the arm, giving him a sympathetic look.

“Come on, big brother.  Screw eggs. Have some cereal with me.” 

And that’s what does it.  His little sister is looking after him, like she always does when Alec can't handle his emotions, and all Alec wants to do is repay her by looking after their bills for them.  If he doesn’t go to this final interview, he and Izzy are going to be right back where they started -- and he really doesn’t want to lose this apartment, or put more stress on his little sister, who is working  _ so  _ hard studying to become a kickass scientist as it is.  He’d made a plan, and he’s going to stick to it, no matter how much it makes him feel like his entire body is being set on fire and drenched in ice at the same time.  Sometimes, you just have to be an adult, and put the real world before stupid things like emotions.

So he eats some terrible sugary cereal with Izzy, and then goes back to his room and pulls on the first shirt he can find and takes a lot of deep breaths in front of the mirror for a while, and eventually, Alec manages to drag himself to campus.  As long as he focuses on just putting one foot in front of the other, all the way til he reaches the psych building, he convinces himself it will be okay.

Of course, then he arrives, and the first thing he sees is Magnus.  And that's when Alec’s stomach falls to the floor. 

Magnus is leaning against the wall outside with his arms crossed across his chest, chewing on one of his black-painted fingernails, but his hand drops away from his mouth when he spots Alec walking up.  It looks like Magnus wasn’t expecting him to turn up, because his face is flooded with shock.   Alec has never felt more awkward or nervous or miserable in his life, but he swallows all of that down, squares his shoulders like a soldier going into battle, and walks just close enough to lightly touch Magnus’s hand with his own.

“Hey,” he says.  Magnus opens his mouth to say something back.

And just then, Professor Parrish opens the door.

“We’re ready for you, boys,” he says, as impassive as ever, completely oblivious to the tense moment he’s walked into.  Alec has no choice but to take one more deep breath, think  _ just pretend for one more hour,  _ and follow him into the room.

 

* * *

 

Alec actually worked it out in his head, at one point.  The study was eight weeks long. Every week involved one hour-long interview at the college, and one three-hour home observation.  That totals out to thirty two hours spent like this -- with Magnus, in front of a bunch of researchers, pretending to be a couple. If you add in the time they've spent walking each other to class and hanging out in public on the college campus to sell the illusion, which was at least half an hour a day for most of the study’s duration, it goes up to nearly fifty two.  And  _ then,  _ if you add how long Alec spent actually living with Magnus -- watching movies together, and cooking dinner, and going to parties with each others' friends, and bickering over the dishes, and studying together in the library, and sleeping wrapped around each other in the same bed each night --

Well, that’s where Alec’s math fails him, because it’s just too much to even begin to figure out.  In his best approximation, it’s probably almost five hundred hours, total, that he and Magnus have spent together in these last two months.  Maybe more.

Five hundred hours.  If Alec had spent all that time picking up a new hobby instead, he could be fluent in another language by now.  Or play at least three of his favourite songs on piano.  And that would have had the added bonus of not ending with him getting his heart broken.

But oh, there’s really not much he can do about it now.  Maybe when this is over and he can never see Magnus again, he'll fill all that sudden free time with cooking classes.

At least Izzy will be happy, then.  And maybe when he meets his real soulmate, someday, the guy would like having someone who knew how to cook.  They wouldn’t have to have those endless hours of bickering in the kitchen like he and Magnus had, constantly wrestling utensils off each other and making messes and trying to convince each other that  _ they  _ really knew the best way to scramble an egg and then all of it ending with their bodies just too close together and their faces warm and food all over both of them.

Yeah, thinks Alec.  At least a cooking class could prevent _that_ from ever happening again.

 

* * *

 

To Alec’s surprise, they survive their final interview.  It feels awkward and stilted every step of the way, but because it’s their closing interview the questions are all very formulaic, and he doesn’t think it’s particularly obvious that neither him nor Magnus wants to be there.  The grad students don’t even look like  _ they  _ wanna be there, at this point.

They mostly ask about Alec and Magnus’s experience of the study, which they can answer mostly honestly, because them taking part in the study is the one thing which  _ hasn’t  _ been a lie.

Then, one of the grad students asks, “Would you say your opinion on soulmates has changed in any way, since your entrance interview two months ago?”

Alec wants to say  _ yes.   _ He wants to say,  _ yes, completely, I don’t care about soulmates anymore, I now completely believe you can be happy with someone who’s not your soulmate and maybe your soulmate just isn’t the right person sometimes and maybe I get to make these choices myself and just say screw everything, screw soulmates, I’m going to do what I want.   _ But he can’t.  And even if he could say that, he wouldn’t, because it isn’t true.

Alec’s feelings about Magnus have changed, in the last two months.  His feelings about  _ himself  _ have changed, in a mixture of really horrible and also really wonderful ways.  But his feelings about soulmates? No, those haven’t changed. They never will.  Alec's soulmate is the most important thing in his world.

“No,” Alec tells the interviewers, trying to talk around the rough feeling in his throat.  “No, I wouldn’t say my opinions have changed at all.”

Next to him, Magnus looks down at the table.  This is the first interview where he’s not holding Alec’s hand.

 

* * *

 

And then, before he knows it, the interview is over.  Professor Parrish, who’s sitting in on the lab interviews for the first time, shakes both their hands before they leave.  Alec hopes his clammy palms aren’t too obvious.

“Thank you for your participation, boys,” the professor says, as he ushers both of them out of the room.  “I’m certain your experiences are going to help our data a lot. You can expect your participation compensation cheques to arrive in the mail by the end of the month.”

And then he closes the door behind them, and it’s just the long corridor of the psych department stretching out in front, and they’re alone.  

Alec kind of wants to just run away immediately, but he knows that isn’t mature.  Besides, they have at least a couple of practical things to sort out, like when Alec’s gonna come over to pick up all his stuff from Magnus’s place.  So instead of fleeing, he just hovers awkwardly next to Magnus, trying to press against the horrible churning in his stomach, the way every part of his body is screaming at him to just reach out for Magnus.

“Well, I guess that’s it,” says Magnus eventually, after Alec has been stood paralysed in silence for far too long.  Magnus doesn’t look like he wants to be speaking either. He doesn’t even look like he wants to  _ be  _ there, with his arms crossed tightly over his chest and his teeth digging anxiously into his bottom lip.

Alec shifts his weight from one foot to the other, hesitation in every joint, to stop himself from moving closer.  “Yeah,” he says, because there’s nothing else to say. “Listen, Magnus -- uh, thanks. For all this. I’ll see you around, okay?”

He gives up.  He can’t do this -- he’ll just text Magnus to arrange when to pick up his things, or maybe send Izzy over to do it, so they never even have to look at each other again.  The depth of Magnus’s eyes is  _ killing  _ him every time he looks into them.  Feeling utterly pathetic and exhausted by his emotions, Alec turns to walk away, and finally close this confusing chapter of his life.

Except before he can leave, one of Magnus’s hands shoots out and grabs him by the elbow, holding Alec in place.  Alec spins in surprise to look back at Magnus, and suddenly the expression in Magnus’s eyes is really, really  _ really  _ sad, like he’s almost broken.  The sadness cuts through the picture of his dramatic makeup and flawless outfit, and Alec’s not sure he’s ever seen Magnus look quite so  _ young. _

“Listen, Alec,” he says, words all coming out in a rush, so fast that Alec barely has time to be heartbroken that Magnus didn’t call him  _ Alexander.   _ And then he carries on, so fast that Alec doesn’t have time to notice, for a moment, that his entire world is being rewritten.  “I don’t know why you lied to the researchers and told them the first thing I ever said to you was about a study group, and I don’t know why you never told me your soulmark said my words, so I’m guessing you just really, really don’t want me as your soulmate.  And I -- I can’t control what you do, I know that, but I just wanted to tell you that if you ever  _ do  _ want me as your soulmate, you know where to find me.   And I'm _not_ mad at you, but you _should_ have told me, be cause this means something to  _me_.  And I wanted this, even if you didn't.  Just so you know. ”

And then Magnus, with tears welling in the bottoms of his eyes, lets go of Alec’s arm and spins around and walks away, leaving Alec just  _ there:  _ alone in the hallway, his arm still half-raised and tingling where Magnus had touched it, and his jaw on the floor.

Alec doesn’t know what just happened.  He doesn’t have a  _ clue  _ what Magnus is talking about.  But all at once, he feels like his feelings for Magnus might, just maybe, have been validated.

All along, the intensity with which he’s cared about Magnus has been unlike any crush or casual non-soulmate dating that he’s ever heard of.  All along, he’s wondered why he fell into this so deep, why it wrenched at every part of his body to think of both being with Magnus  _ and  _ of leaving him behind.  Every single memory in Alec’s brain is suddenly leaping out at him, thousands of tiny scenes of the two of them flashing behind his eyes, and he can’t even think, can’t breathe, can’t believe it --

And then, all of a sudden, it just boils down to one thing.  Magnus had said the word  _ soulmate.   _ And t hat’s all that matters.

Alec’s whole universe is thundering in his heartbeat.  He doesn’t pause for a moment more before setting off racing after Magnus, running as fast as he can to make up the time he just  _ wasted  _ standing there in shock while Magnus walks away.  And he knows it’s not the end of the world if he doesn’t catch Magnus now, he  _ knows  _ he could call him or text him or go to his apartment tonight and get this all sorted out, but Alec doesn’t want to lose a single second more, he  _ can’t  _ lose  a single second more, he feels like it might kill him if Magnus goes on thinking that Alec doesn’t want him like that.  So Alec runs, sprinting through the psych block and out into the main corridor of the science building, and then he catches a glimpse of a door swinging shut at the other end, and he makes the split-second decision to follow it.

And then, just after he bursts through the science block’s doors and out into the quad, Alec spots him.  Magnus is just a blur walking the other way, half obscured by a tree, but Alec would recognise him anywhere.  There are other people around, but Alec couldn’t care less -- he  _ races  _ the last few meters and grabs Magnus by the elbow, and Magnus barely has time to startle and spin around before Alec is catching him around the waist, and pulling Magnus into a deep, explosive kiss.

Alec doesn’t care about the eyes on them.  He’s oblivious to the rest of the school, the rest of the whole world.  He only lives in the points where he’s touching Magnus, and it reminds him of every single time they lay together in Magnus’s bed in the dark, all those times when it felt like the entire universe was only spinning around them.

This is what people are talking about when they talk about soulmates.  Alec doesn’t have a clue how he didn’t understand that before.

It could take decades for them to pull apart -- Alec doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care, his whole head too dazed to even think of the concept of time.  Magnus’s eyes stay closed for a long second as their lips part from one last lingering kiss, and Alec keeps both his arms wound around Magnus’s waist, Magnus’s own hands pressed into Alec’s shoulders in surprise, as they both come back to themselves.  When Magnus finally comes back to himself and flutters his eyes open, he looks more surprised than Alec has ever seen him.

“Magnus, do you really mean it?” Alec asks, voice low and hushed, speaking into just the space between their lips.  “Your first words to me weren’t about study group?

Tentatively, Magnus touches his lips, and says, “I -- no?  When I first came over, I said _  hello there, handsome.  _  And then you said _hey_ , and I asked you about study group.  Did you… did you not  _ remember _ that?”

Alec’s heart thunders ever louder, and for a moment nothing makes sense, except the way Magnus’s is fitted against his and the fact that Magnus is talking to him again.  But then. Then, all of a sudden. It hits him.

“Magnus, I had  _ headphones  _ in.  I was listening to a symphony while I studied, I --”  Alec can’t help it. All of a sudden, he throws his head back, and bursts out laughing. “I literally  _ didn’t hear you,  _ oh my god, this is ridiculous, you said my words and I  _ didn’t even hear you,  _ M agnus, I had no idea, I felt so awful because I thought you weren't my soulmate but with every single day I --”

Right on cue, it stops being funny.  Alec stops laughing, and instead, he swallows around his tongue, suddenly nervous.  But no. He shouldn’t be nervous about this. This is something he needs to say.  Something he should have been saying a long, long time ago, if they hadn’t been so clueless.  Alec ducks his head to meet Magnus’s eyes, their faces just a fraction of an inch apart, and for a moment, it feels like their souls meet too.

“With every single day, I was falling more in love with you.”

Magnus drags him back into a kiss, then.  Alec certainly isn’t complaining. In his mind, they should have been kissing this whole time, if not for the past year then at  _ least  _ for these past two months, so he’s more than happy to make up for lost time.

When they manage to break apart again, Magnus says, “It’s actually all coming back to me now.  Was I literally the one who tugged your headphones out of your ear after I introduced myself?” Alec nods, and Magnus laughs, sounding rather giddy.  “We are both such  _ idiots. _ ”

“Yeah.  To think we could have been doing  _ this  _ all along,” Alec agrees, and kisses Magnus again, and again, because why the hell not?  

“For what it’s worth, at this point,” Magnus says, between kisses, and twines his hands around Alec’s neck, dragging their bodies ever closer.  “I love you, too.”

It’s worth a lot.  It’s really, really worth a lot.

And then, because he wants to keep kissing Magnus but he’d also love to do it in a place that isn’t next to a trashcan while half their college classmates watch, Alec says, “Let’s go home.”

In all this time, he thinks it’s the first time he’s genuinely called Magnus’s apartment ‘home’ _.   _ But he means it.  Alec is finally allowed to admit what he’s really felt deep down all along: for him,  _ home _ is just wherever Magnus Bane wants to be.

 

 

* * *

 

_ THREE MONTHS LATER _

 

“No, no, you just sit there,  _ I’ll  _ carry it all,” Alec mutters to himself, as he balances two heavy moving boxes in his arms and tries to lug them through the living room.  Magnus, who is sat on the couch with a huge mug of hot chocolate in one hand and his phone in the other, swats Alec on the butt as he passes.

“Thanks, dear!” he chirps, giving his most innocent grin.

“Magnus, I was being _sarcastic._ All this stuff is yours, anyway!”  Still, Alec carries the tower of boxes through into his bedroom, dumping them with the rest of Magnus’s possessions in a rapidly-growing pile against the wall.  When he emerges from his room again, the first thing he finds is Izzy and Ragnor in the corridor, wrestling over a particularly fluffy throw pillow.

“He  _ stole  _ this from me and never gave it back, the bugger!”

“Well, too bad!  I’ve already picked out which couch it’s going on to tie the decorating scheme together!”

Alec just rolls his eyes at the pair of them, and keeps walking.

In the kitchen, he finds Dot and Catarina eating their way through the better half of a plate of nachos, each with a glass of wine in hand.  Dot gives him a sort of guilty look when he walks in, but Catarina just waves, clearly unburdened by the fact that neither of them have carried a single box the whole time they’ve been here.

To be fair, a lot of their friends had seemed more interested in the snacks and drinks Alec had promised than in  _actually_ helping Magnus move.  But that's okay.  Just for today, Alec is so giddy-happy about his boyfriend moving in that he can't really bring himself to care if he does all the work.

Back when they were pretending to live together for the study, it made more sense to do it at Magnus’s apartment, but now that they’re moving in for  _ real  _ Alec’s apartment was the clear choice.  Izzy would still need somewhere to live, for starters, and Alec likes having her as a roommate.  Their apartment also has the added bonus of being more than one room, with a lot more space, and in a  _ way _ less dangerous neighbourhood.  The only real change they needed to make for everything to be perfect was to switch Alec’s shitty single bed for Magnus’s luxurious king-size.  

Of course, that’s not the only change they  _ are  _ making.  The second they decided on all this, Magnus and Izzy teamed up and planned a complete redecoration of the apartment.  They’re going to paint the walls and rearrange the furniture and everything. Alec doesn’t have a clue about any of it, but he’s happy to be their clueless muscle and move stuff around while they do the beautifying.  It’s going to be a totally different place by the time they’re done with it.

Alec’s happy about that.  He doesn’t want this to feel like the same apartment that just he and Izzy lived in.  He wants it to be somewhere new. Somewhere filled up with Magnus’s presence, even if, really, all Magnus needs to do to fill a room with himself is set foot inside of it.

Alec loves that about him.

He should be going to get more boxes, really, but nobody  _ else _ is working, so Alec decides it’s okay to take a break.  Instead, he navigates back to the living room where Magnus is still sat barefoot on the couch with his knees tucked up, and drops down beside him.   _ Right  _ beside him.  So close that they’re touching all the way down their sides.  Alec swings an arm over Magnus’s shoulders immediately.

Magnus turns to look at him, still clutching onto his hot chocolate, and beams.

“Hey, soulmate,” he says, letting one hand come to rest on Alec’s knees.

“Hey, soulmate,” Alec replies, and gives him a short little kiss.  “Oh, by the way, I’m onto you. You’re not helping move because you don’t wanna chip your nails.”

“I  _ just  _ got them gel painted, Alexander!  Have some compassion!”

Alec bursts out laughing, leaning back into the couch and throwing his head back against it.  In the other rooms, he can hear the sounds of their friends bickering and chatting -- that  _ might  _ be the sound of Izzy slamming Ragnor into a wall, and Dot and Catarina are definitely getting giggly over the wine they found -- but all that matters to him, right then, is sitting with Magnus.

“So, how are you feeling about the move?  No cold feet?” Alec teases. It’s become a bit of a running joke between them, because Alec asked him to move in at least five times before Magnus agreed.  He kept saying he didn’t want to  _ move too fast,  _ but to Alec, there’s no such thing as too fast when you’ve found the one.  And Magnus is his one.

“Hmm, only because this apartment is so drafty,” Magnus replies with a grin, wiggling his bare toes against Alec’s leg.  Alec tries to squirm away from him without actually letting go of his shoulders, which is a bit of a struggle. “Other than that?  I can’t see why I’d be feeling anything less than thrilled. I’m moving in with my soulmate, after all.”

“Yeah,” Alec agrees, and his mischievous smile fades into something far more sincere.  “You are.”

Where his arm is draped around Magnus’s shoulders, Alec lets his fingers dangle down a little more, until they’re brushing the lines of Magnus’s soulmark where it’s exposed by his open-necked shirt.  He’s gotten used to the way that Magnus wears his mark so brazenly, by now.  Actually, Alec has sort of grown to love it.  He loves being able to look over, whenever he wants, and see  _ his  _ word painted across Magnus’s collarbone.

As if he knows exactly what Alec’s thinking, Magnus turns, and slides just one fingertip under the hem of Alec’s shirt, until it’s brushing right along Alec’s soulmark.  There’s a  _ crash _ from the kitchen, and stomping footsteps from one of the bedroom, but Alec’s brain filters absolutely all of it out.

“I love you,” Alec says, and Magnus kisses him.  It feels as natural as breathing does. It feels as pure as air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and with that, we have come to the end! thanks for joining me on this little journey, guys. i particularly loved reading all your guesses about ways they might still be soulmates, and well done to several of you for getting it right ^_^ 
> 
> you can find me & more of my malec stuff on my tumblr [here](http://milominderbindered.tumblr.com)!

**Author's Note:**

> and so it begins ♥ the next chapter will be up later tonight!


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